Get Creative!
Do you paint, draw, write, dance, sing, play, snap, sculpt, or act? If so, please dazzle us with your talents by posting your creative endeavors here in whatever medium you see fit.
The only rule is: you did it.
The only rule is: you did it.
Comments (703)
Now I'm into astrophotography. But I'm not very good at it.
I want to take up an instrument but haven't gotten around to it.
Sometimes I write stories or poetry.
Ezra Pound, 1885 - 1972
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Me, I started taking photos of people this summer, which I've never done before.
Baltimore, Ireland in September
Peel Castle, Peel, Isle of Man in September.
Nice Jamalrob! (and not just the location of the Fotos)
and elsewhere...
Not too sure if I can upload any of the old VCR tapes of my choreography, then again... I'm not too sure it's worth it. That was another lifetime it seems.
I'll try to photograph some of my attempts at raku(ish) pottery and 'bending porcelain'.
Meow!
GREG
btw... It's a shame I cannot upload some of my creative cooking.
William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Recently, I was in Centennial Park and the light was just great. I took a series of photographs;three exposures one stop apart for each image, and then produced High Dynamic Range images in Photoshop. I like the fact that, because you see good detail in both the shadows and the highlights of HDR images, looking at them can be more like 'real looking' than with 'ordinary' photographs, producing an almost '3D' kind of effect. (Some HDR images can certainly look 'overblown' though).
@Monitor -The best way to upload is just to drag and drop a reasonably sized file in jpg format into the comment box. @John - Your pic is probably just too large in terms of dimensions. It would have to be resized for the screen anyway. I advise you to do a .jpg at 95% and maybe make it 6 or 700 pixels across. It won't be perfect but at least we'll be able to see it. (My pic above is much reduced in quality and size but it still looks OK, I think.) Those paintings are great by the way. 8-)
.
Is the coming stage of howling thunders and hectic lightning
To shatter broken ships carelessly along its boundless shore
And prepare the beds for the millions who come whitening,
While the eye of heaven indifferently smiles.
Today one is born, and another viciously brought to his end
Man is Nature’s straw dog, a ragged plaything, disposable,
Oh, if I have learned a thing tis that Nature’s no man’s friend;
It goes along its unchanging course leaving the opposable
Crushed.
I cry, but what right have I to make demands of Nature
Merely cause there’s no suffering in my vain philosophy?
I curse her for her cruelty, but what right has a creature
In front of its Creator to spin a phantasmagorical story? -
Jerusalem is a fiction!
Oh Jerusalem, what need have I of you or you of me
For if you exist, then certainly you care not for flies
And neither can the fly with your perfect purity agree;
That which is imperfect I understand, all else are lies,
And salvation too is a terrible lie!
Like Sisyphus, I pick up my lovely rock, not my cross,
I follow not the Crucified, but the madness of Dionysus,
I ascend under the golden galleon to Olympus at a loss,
Regardless, “non serviam”, thus spake Prometheus,
For the struggle itself is the joy of the morning star!
[/quote]
Wrote this poem a few weeks ago! In the Absurdist vein. Will post a few more soon! :)
PS: Btw, I don't have a title, so please feel free to suggest :p
... as is usual I kind of didn't pay attention to what we were being taught and my efforts didn't really reflect the class intention.
Anyway...
... here are a few of my 'misguided efforts':
I ended up making about 45 pieces and gave most away, but my wife insisted I keep a few. I think I have another 4 or 5 somewhere in the apartment, but that was sort of the general direction.
Meow!
GREG
That was a 'one off', as I really never was able to get porcelain to bend and stick together like that again.
It was bit and pieces of broken plates that I managed to heat to a point that I could control it and bend it into a curve. They sort of just stuck together and I managed to glaze them.
It only took about 4 hours and then the time for the glaze, about two days I suppose.
I should really pay more attention to how I do things, but it's how I tend to cook as well... just make it up as I go and it usually works out. So far no deaths... :D
Meow!
GREG
A bit of a tight fit...
I should have made a size 7 3/8.
Meow!
GREG
At times it is a really good thing we are not blood related!
Thanks Baden, I have done as you suggested and inserted the other Centennial Park images as well. I really like your photos especially the two 'abstracts' and the macaque portrait is a beauty!
Jamalrob, I think they are nicely composed shots, but it's the image of the prostrate dude, that is entering the arena of the 'art photograph'.
Handsome dude! And talented, too; nice portrait. Take the plunge, finish the hair...
Another handsome dude! Nice ceramics and I particularly like your 'cat perch'.
Drawing the Epistemic Line
Drawing a line along the dark hedgerows,
mark the narrows where the night opens
and colours invade the disjointed traversal;
thought pictures that don’t belong there, edgy colours;
acid red, blue and green dancing around
the edges of monochrome.
Not the fall of night that brings the darkness,
but the occlusion of light by regional objects,
constructing the context of obscurity
in the deadlock of the senses.
A ragged silhouette of dark trees contracts
the silky sea of faintly luminescent sky,
Under light particular steady rain
from distant suns the night lies drenched
in noon-tide where shadows come to time;
A lingering ghost of eternal night,
a monochromatic corpus enfleshed
by the savage rain of the local star.
This is one of the few I have done from a photo, mostly I like to get outside and plein air paint. Or come up with an image based on a poem.
And thank you for the all kind words.
I really enjoy all the creativity that the posters have all displayed.
Funny thing about my 'helmet photo' is the background is something from a real artist. ;) http://www.sergibarnils.net/
Meow!
GREG
Quoting bert1
"Decisions" you give me too much credit :) I'm still learning and can't mix the colors that I want as acrylic paint gets slightly darker as it dries. For that painting I premixed a bunch of shades before starting (I think it was 9), so while I was painting I didn't have much choice in the matter.
River of Divinity
Literature for the light goodness knows by reason
of these imaginings or perhaps of seeing, when seasonal
calculations of the vectors of high flown life draw fly
blown god, immortality and death, where pictures come to dry,
and seethe in actuality, any ‘story’ is particular or is it not, no
truth or barnacles, however because there sometime grows
no life, starving off the enlightenment goal, and dread
pursuing a final idea in the flood’s dark reign bled
from imagination’s pale analogy of this plodding trek,
grew some with the idea of a departing speck ,
dirty as the given lubrication of a number of ways
and opening to represent in additional practice, plays;
lubricious, vivid and colourful that languages thus
we the people have imagined and imagination must
be exceedingly o doubtless reading, writing, and root
what is imagined in your philosophy and thus may help us soothe
unacknowledged the idea of escape velocity, flaccid, blessed
steam shovel, to smell a rosy resting remainder and so come to rest?
Glory and hoary, fairly o hairy in imagination’s tide,
philosophy for the signatory, on the grunty literary ride,
and the helper helps reality to rise based on seething
similarities and from the ditch phenomena breeding,
all abandoned the bad tempering of signification’s turn,
and spurn what challenges, to be able to live without hurt
In pinkened certainty, to purge from loin wiring fly
ruthlessly demeaning of yonder destination, it is by
simulacrum assumed that life’s felt painstaking
it out and envelopment devolves flapping from aching
analytic in the wind canal lead shot white out live,
life drifting to fire or smoke, escape but then finally arrive ?
Anywhere? Because within beloved ocean of Being This
on the common, ruminations of the soul dismiss
or darken self’s journey through, but should this much
being the process of drawing on a blinding touch
and scorching entities such as the soul, that can be bound,
so that potentiality may lead to dream delusions, or run aground
in madness, forbid the normal dead imagination to enthrall
all that is desirable. It is then a grim intellectual withdrawal
of those who are as guilty of such mistakes as are the thieves
of idealism, spiritualism, and beauty, so the intellect believes
walking through life as though a path could go on to infinity,
and mind be a responsible drop to an actual river of divinity?
Thanks bert :)
Man and Dog
Thanks bert, that's a nice observation; that had not been thematically figural for me before.
I'm very happy to hear that Tiff, thanks. I am kind of reluctant to try to explain the title; it would be like trying to explain the punchline of a joke. Perhaps the best way to approach its meaning is via allusive references.
For me hit on something with the "orgasm" and "symbolic" references. Other associations are 'conception', 'insemination', 'dissemination', 'seminal', 'semiosis', "flesh of the world" (Merleau-Ponty), the body as landscape. I am fascinated by the idea of the generation of meaning (form) in the sensory/sensual/conceptual relationships living, feeling, thinking bodies have to one another and to the animate earth, and the general relationships between affective processes (sensory and proprioceptive) and rational processes.
Cavacava, I have been attending a course called Philosophy and Poetry at Sydney University, and by amazing coincidence these very lines from Ezra Pound were presented the other night as an example of the differences between, and transition from, Romantic to Modernist imagery.
I think painting images from poems is an excellent idea, and I very much like your paintings; you have a great sense of colour, and for me your images are very fresh, almost 'naif' (in a good way). I also had a look at your other works on Tumblr; very nice! I am also thinking of posting my work somewhere on line. Would you say Tumblr is the best choice?
I post on Tumblr because I find it is a convenient way to keep a virtual file of my work. Once it is on there it is easy to copy and paste to emails, forums and other places on line. I have never spent much time browsing around it, it is an enormous compendium of work by all kinds of people.
If you like poetry, music lyrics, rap try http://genius.com/ It is very interesting site, with individual interpretations of all types of works.
Thanks Cavacava, I'll check it out...
Harry's Bar, it been around for a a long time. Cheap beer and easy company (during the early evening) more biker bar latter on in the evening. Cheers!
Here is what Harry's looks like from camera perspective.
Warmest wishes for very happy holidays to all :)
Latest effort...Interruption.
Based on the 7 Mile Bridge on Florida Keys, my latest.
Laundromats are splendid topics of street/room scapes. They combine clean white cubes, (usually, clean, white...) dilapidated ceilings, little furniture -- and what there is often mismatched, dirty floors...
And they are classic urban spaces, bringing together odd combos of people to all wash clothes, and yet not mixing with each other--usually. They should mix, because it is a time limited space; discussions can't get too deep for too long, because someone will suddenly be finished. One could perhaps confess one's sins to one's neighbors.
A number of artists have put incongruously naked people in laundromats. Sitting on the floor in front of a machine, sitting on a machine. I've never seen anyone naked in a laundromat, sadly. But where are naked people not incongruous Not the bank, not McDonalds, not the bus, not the grocery store, not the bar (well, usually not), not church, not in class, hardly anywhere.
Did you see the film, My Beautiful Launderette? Wonderful movie.
In a seedy corner of London, Omar (Gordon Warnecke), a young Pakistani, is given a run-down laundromat by his uncle (Saeed Jaffrey), who hopes to turn it into a successful business. Soon after, Omar is attacked by a group of racist punks, but defuses the situation when he realizes their leader is his former lover, Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis). The men resume their relationship and rehabilitate the laundromat together, but various social forces threaten to compromise their success.
Yes, I saw the 'My Beautiful Launderette' I don't remember the details very well, but I do recall that I liked it. Daniel Day Lewis was great as a punker. I remember the way they redesigned the run-down laundry, it was fantastic almost surreal update, the christening party was a quite a scene, if I recall correctly. Took place during Margaret Thatcher's time in office, it must have knocked her socks off!
The 7 Mile Bridge does have an abandoned bridge that is no longer has car traffic, but you will see scores of people fishing off it all the time. And, yes there are old train trestles still jutting out into the ocean in areas as you drive along the keys. The train track was destroyed by the 'hurricane of the century' in 1935, 400 people died in the storm. The company didn't have the funds to rebuild so there it still stands, I think it is on the list of historical places.
Thanks re the painting.
Hi, could you help me, pls? How do I attach an image here (I took a few photos).
Hiya Irina! Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!
If you follow this link and click on the 'Upload' tab, upload the photo and then select and copy the 'Link'. Come back to TPF and select the tab 'Insert Image' and populate the 'Link' field with the paste function.
[url=https://postimg.org/image/tohjc62mf/]
https://s26.postimg.org/l3de3e1yh/2222222222.jpg
https://postimg.org/image/vdft2mrtx/4b2edc55/
Edit: It should be available now.
The link provided above was posted on a 'Tips' thread here at TPF to help people upload pictures.
Subscribe option won't work for me at the mo
https://postimage.org/ was the link contained within my reply. See if that works for you.
So what you do is you ask someone what the capitol of Thailand is and when they tell you, you punch them in the crotch. An oldie but a goodie. Feel free to use it as your own.
Cool! Sounds so much easier!
My vacation address is:
34631 N. Tom Darlington Drive
Carefree, AZ 85377
Just note for "Tiffers" and it will find it's way to my desk. In the event of the pictures being 'saucy' in nature, please mark the envelope: Personal and Confidential. 8-)
Little Munich in Lake Worth Florida. casual German Bar & Restaurant. It has a long bar with many shelves of liquor facing it...they remind me of bookcases (holding volumes). Gabby is the owner, nice German lady with a good collection of Germany's great beers. My favorite is Spaten Optimator. They also serve crispy golden fried(or broiled?) Wienerschnitzel , a vinegary potato salad, and cabbage...yum!
Oh, the little guy on the top right is some sort of German fetish item, she told me the name but I don't recall.
what to do in case of a zombie attack
[hide]
EAT BRAINS !!!
[/hide]
works for me...I just clicked reveal.
Does it only reveal for the person that posted it?
refresh?
Here is Rudy's, a small local pub, Mary is one of the owners...Rudy's is one of the few pubs with Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer on tap. They have a Taco Tuesday night, with lots of great music played on a wide variety of instruments. Free tacos, they go great with PBRs. The place is small, and it gets packed, the crowd overflows on to the street.
I asked Mary where the name Rudy's came from...she said it had to do with her mother thoughts and a cardinal (Rudy). There are images of cardinals here and there about the bar.
I'm not sure why Vin Diesel was trying to kill me.
I downloaded the prisma app but I have not tried it. I do a lot with photographs for biz, I have to manipulate them to some extent, its fun.
I am going to do some Plein Air with 37 other painters this Saturday afternoon weather permitting. I am excited because it is at Society of the 4 Arts on Palm Beach Island. Great place, art, sculpture, plays, library....several buildings spread out over several acres going down to the Inter coastal. Really very pretty area.
I have visited it several times and tried to paint aspects of it along the Lake Trail that goes part-way around the Island. There is a wish fountain that faces the inter-coastal by Noguchi
My rendition of this.
It is very neat to see whatever one else is doing, so if the rain gives a break, I'll get to paint with some very talented people.
This is a painting I finished the other day. I can't get the image to show up in the post yet.
Ahha! See following post.
I didn't escape but I have big plans for my reincarnation.
Prisma is fun. It's not Photoshop... But if you take a photo of a painting, it becomes bunches of paintings.
"That is the least practical thing I've ever seen" - one of my mates.
A few more paintings.
Nice!
This one too.
Seems to be much of an extra dimension that really works to your images when you include people Cavacava. Individually they work for me sometimes, but I can never seem to put them together (environments and people that is).
These are mysteriously intriguing, Mongrel; are they self-portraits? What media are you using?
Once I have a body of work sufficient and which I judge are suitable, I will have them printed in Giclee, but I mainly sell them as unframed canvases at the moment. They are quite popular.
I have never tried to sell my work. When you say you will have them printed, do you mean in order to sell as prints? You say your work is popular, and i can see why it would be, but have you had good success selling them for reasonable money (by "reasonable", I mean to cover your time in producing them). I hope you don't mind me asking these questions. I am hoping to get inspiration and learn about ways and means of selling my own work; perhaps then I could give up my contracting business which involves designing and building gardens for people. This sounds like a good job to be sure and it pays well and does have its creative satisfactions, but I have been doing it too long now (about 40 years) and the work is very physically demanding (which obviously doesn't get any easier as the years roll by).
The difficulty is in finding your market.
You either have to generate followers yourself or attempt to fit in to a tradition from which a wider audience will purchase. For example in my case, there is a tradition of landscapes in East Anglia where I live. With many galleries, many buyers, and tourists and holiday makers, who have followed and developed an appreciation of the local styles and tradition. If you were to visit just about any house around here you would find original works from this tradition on the wall, with much appreciation. You just tap into that market.
Another route is through art competitions, local art schools, local galleries. These routes are not easy with mixed success. Sometimes something controversial or striking can get local media attention, but again difficult.
Ideally you would just want to produce paintings that people want to buy at first sight, but this requires an exceptional talent, or something very unusual.
Are there any artistic traditions in your area?
John I have always drawn, painting only last 3/4 yrs. Painting is adding a new dimension for me.
Its funny I hate games that require stop watches, like speed chess. I think chess should be played with a friend some beer and a good whiskey. What surprised the hell out of me took place on a trip to Barcelona a couple of years ago. I went to a timed Figure Drawing session, the process seduced me. Now I feel guilty when I don't go onto You Tube and catch a Croquis Cafe.
Here is a of work from a my visit to Massachusetts, in New England. My brother, he lives in the Groton area, which in US terms is old, settled around 1655. Great views and fantastic weather, a little early foliage.
Another nice work! Thanks for you frank answers Punshhh; I appreciate it. Unfortunately the genres in my area are not exactly genres that my work (for the most part) fits into.
I really like your fresh sense of colour Cavacava.
Oh I forget to answer your question about prints. If you have a painting that is good enough or is suitable for becoming a print this increases the income from one painting, also some people prefer a print, sometimes due to cost. The standard printing technique for professional artists is Giclee printing. This uses a high resolution scan, or photograph and real paint inks to produce a print which can look as good as the original, without the same surface texture. If I have a good painting I would look to have the software of the image produced which costs around £50, then I can have copies printed on demand, between £10 and £30 each. There are cheaper printing techniques, which are appropriate on ocassion.
If I may ask, which region of Australia are you in?
I was trying out a some new magic markers. The coloring was digital.. from an app called Prisma.
Cool landscapes from . I've never been able to do much with landscapes. I'm more of a portrait person.
Thanks Punshhh good suggestions and ideas; and I appreciate your openness.
I live in Sydney.
I've been experimenting with cutting the doodle people out and placing them in various collage-like situations. It started with photoshop stuff I used to do.
Shades of Turner; I like it...
That's cool, I can see where your background is verging towards abstraction. Do you ever work with paint and canvas or other physical media?
Not much; I prefer the what I see as the much greater subtlety of Japanese gardens; and I am much more familiar with the principles underlying those. No doubt there is some commonality, since the Japanese traditions find much of their inception in the Chinese, and as you no doubt are aware not only on regard to gardening. Prefer the Chinese martial arts, though.
I happened upon an interesting Australian artists the other day, Sydney Long, I'm already drawing inspiration from his work.
Yes, several of his paintings are in NSW Art Gallery. I was always somehow drawn to his work. The pastoral muse....
On another note I have forgotten how to attach the images so they appear in the post rather than just as attachments. Do you (or does any one else) have any advice?
As Mongrel says, biology and by extension for me, brings to mind Klee, and to a lesser extent, Miro. I love to see such free experimentation.
Here's my biology one. I had some pain issues at the time.
That's great! Is it oil or acrylic on canvas or board? Was your pain on account of veritas, or was it due to lack of clarity about it?
This is from Wikipedia:
In Roman mythology, Veritas, meaning truth, was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn and the mother of Virtus. It was believed that she hid in the bottom of a holy well because she was so elusive. Her image is shown as a young virgin dressed in white.
I like the idea that Truth, the elusive one hiding at the bottom of a holy well is the mother of Virtue, and the daughter of Time.
It's hard to see your refection in the bottom of a well, however holy.
As I remember Don Juan once saying to Carlos Castaneda about what it is to be a warrior (very roughly paraphrased);
"He could be staring at Satan himself, and no one would ever know."
That's cool. I didn't know that story. The word was in my environment because there's a precision drill bit company called Veritas. I was asking you about Chinese gardens... there are sometimes words and poetry on display in them. Do Japanese gardens ever do that?
Ah. Poker face.
I'm not sure; I've never seen it as far as I can recall.
I like your Mycellium, but mycellium are static and your work seems to me more fluid, dynamic. Like a river flowing over rocks, white waters splashing and turning into calmer blues. Joyful, looks like it could have been fun to paint.
It's interesting you should say that, because there is an older painting underneath, which is precisely of complex streams of water flowing over rocks, that didn't work. So I painted over it. Not much of it still shows, though.
The title is a reference to Terence McKenna's wacky idea that mycellium (at least in the mycellium of Psilocybe (and other hallucinogenic genera) mushrooms) is an active neural net hosting an intelligence that spans the globe.
Also, the experience of Psilocybe dreaming is anything but static! ;)
I was going to say something along those lines, but thought it was to hedonistic for such a polite audience.
Hmmm, I don't know that I'd class the psilocybe experience as hedonistic; for me it always involved at least as much suffering as joy.
http://pabstblueribbon.com/art/
Yes, when it's good, it's certainly good. A healthy spiritual 'hedonism', free from anxious desire, though, not a debased one, wouldn't you say?
8-)
That's a pretty cool cartoon of Gordon!
Good stuff John :)
Love those cartoons. I too was incensed by the Iraq war, but don't have something so bitingly creative to show for it. 8-) (I have done some written satire, but directed against other targets).
I like this better than my 1st Pabst.
Cool cartoons Punshhh, and I agree that one is better Cavacava (Y)
Frequent tracker numb and low
Painted upon an artificial sky
Botched in rage with lines of mellow
Script lit. eyes sit, haze hits
Flounder within the murky water
gulp gas, and sneeze oil
Monstrous nightmare daughter
exhale life and endless toil
Closed now, for thou, I vow.
Time ends again and again
It's mourned eternally
Sleeping yesterday and dreaming tomorrow
Wrapped up, warm, and maternally
Crying with the tears we borrow.
Nice :) . I have been thinking about making a painting from this.
here's the music video of how an IDEA CAN TRAVEL THROUGH SPACE AND TIME!
Cash me ousside, how bow dah?
You probably don't want to cash her in or ouside.
Florida is a trip
:-|
As stated in the description, the strip isn't intended to push any particular agenda; it's just a bit of fun.
More picsart
The ending of things
Looking at these, I have a theory about your triptych:
a) The crack looks like a crack.
b) It looks like you inserted the McDonald's cup after working it over with filters. Not sure, but I like it.
c) Baby's breath? [best tonal range of the three]
The way nature wears somethings making them unappealing, like the oil stained crack, but not always, as you show with your McDonald's cup, and in the end it is the breath life adds which suggests renewal spring is coming.
Anyway, that's what I got out of it.
Tonal range. I wonder how that relates to emotional tone. Flatter range, flatter emotion?
Frank Miller
Dramatic effect
I just returned to look at this forgotten thread. Some nice images Mongrel, I particularly like the weird tree one and the McDonalds drink container on the grass.
Wow! The Dark Knight battles through a sea of blood?
Nice!
Great shot. That is perfectly illustrative of humans' proclivity to see faces, even where there clearly are none. Given how avidly and readily we do so, there must have been an incredibly strong selection pressure in our ancestral past for detecting and recognizing other people's faces (the fact that we also apparently have a region of the brain dedicated at least in part to facial recognition - i.e. the fusiform gyrus - speaks to such importance).
https://sparrow.bandcamp.com/releases
I wait for a blinking light
Around which now this day does spin,
this tiny pulse of white.
Like a planet plucked
from out of space,
to cruelly warp both time and place
So that every glint and every glow,
rakes this heart to race.
But more than heart
so too does skin,
the knots beneath
which arch and spring.
And while the world around does dim,
become a foil for that flicker and flit
It's upon that gently blinking light
- your light,
I wait.
--
My first time writing a thing.
Nice thing (Y)
Oh, prim witch, can you not uncrack your smile to make a sale? Your fault-lined face jagged and spiked. Did no one oil you up today? The clickings in your head buzz dry. What inner static stiffs you so?
(Why did I come here anyway? All metal and wheels and shine. Suffer me the steel-laden air...)
But wait, Judge Jaded, my inner wretch, what causes this riff, this nasty bass? As if her face forever frowned. But maybe, in a lick of light, a change of mood could take her flight and we’d cheery talk of life gone spare, words a-bounce like tennis balls, we’d float a sea with salty tales, we’d bang our heads on wordy walls, and spin the breeze ‘til it sucked us up, and off to Kansas in a tick ‘til Oz surrenders and we crack the whip. There’s no place like...
[i]….this model though we only have white or black unless you’re...
...over 5 years but the interest would be slightly higher…[/i]
She’s not biting I see. My hooks spin above her murky pond. Her eely eyes can’t trace their trails, and so I respond minus the fat as lean and white and black as...
...Thanks for that. I’ll have a think.
Then off and out into the city’s stink.
What is the media?
Beautiful.
Car saleswoman in a showroom :) And thanks! More shall I inflict on ye anon. ;)
(Y)
Go, you good things!
Another recent "thing":
Moonlight explores valleys and streams
a creeping stillness that touches blind waters
and sentient mountains of dream.
Night skies are crowding around a distant light,
a towering skin of horizontal silence;
enfolded in the mechanical heart
where a random jumble of violence
pours a murmuring and faintly cacophonous
choir of voices up and out to velvet skies,
carelessly stirring the gathering violet of darkness.
You register the soft impress of the night;
beyond horizons migratory flames are licking,
and nomadic winds are fingering the light
across the formal surface of the world-wicking.
imaging the warm blooded cries of the moon.
https://nobledust.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/tuning-peg/
https://nobledust.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/westsider-rare/
Thanks, and nice mountain view (Y)
We sailed over my worries into the past,
Into the infinite first feeling.
Not like the first drop of rain,
But empty, as the first change in pressure.
After all, I was an egret -
Elegant, infinite,
Indefinite.
You know that hour between a normal day
And the oncoming odd orange glow –
No, yellow, like the house where we grew up;
The infinite hour, the inward hourless inlet
In the seaburn of the sorrowing glow…
No, not like that –
Like the concave memory
Of an oncoming rainstorm:
The intensification of a Psalm,
Like the first drops that remember
Like the remembering link in the mind
Of the first change in pressured hands and their electric touch?
That’s the feeling. That.
And not much else, but only everything else.
Only the nothingness of everything
Contained within the first feeling. Not the first memory.
The first feeling.
I dreamt I flew on black raven wings -
A child, infinite, carried on the sheer evolution of the mind
From innocence to an indefinite egress
Into the elegant inward of the inland egret.
Involution involuntary; evolution into inwardness –
“And a cold wind blows on the hearth forever.”
Not my words, but my brother’s.
In the house where we grew up.
Kevin is a friend. He is one of the few native Floridians I have met here in Florida. He is very conservative, flies the flag, and works on his house and yard almost religiously. His yard is all fenced around, his protection. He barbecues like a pro.
No clue really, unless the image was still tied to my computer in some way. I recently reset its defaults settings, and I have been resetting my regular internet connections for the last several days.
No, I don't think so. I did go there but I wasn't overly enthused with my photos so I'm pretty sure I didn't post them.
See and listen till the last
Brought to surface with a quake
Drown in a mirrored lake
Material fashioned with a voice
Asleep with a corpse to hoist
Chaos and order sing
Emptiness is all you fling
Caught in a well without sight
Waiting for a beam of light
Pace the earth on every path
From each one form a craft
From arms of chairs spit and laugh
Feel no spirit feel no gaffe
Senseless dead epiphany
Cannibalize a crystal sea.
This is you and this is me
And so it will remain for eternity.
Do Your Best
Bottle up the midnight skies
Dance amidst ice and fire
String thy soul like a lyre
Close two eyes and open four
Make the rabbit thy mentor
Move to the left, then the right
Climb to the highest height
Speak the cosmos into being
See all the chains as freeing
Sit still and wait no more
Be in awe of what thy bore
Sleep now for all to see
Take refuge in a dying tree
Die for eternal lore
Want for naught and ask no more.
8-)
I can love you in a car.
I can love you from afar.
I cannot love you less than that.
I love you like I love my cat.
I can love you in a house.
Like cheese is loved by a fat old mouse.
I can love you on a shelf.
I love you more than life itself.
I can love you on a bed.
I can love you in your head.
Don't tell me I can't love you now.
Tis the only way that I know how.
I can love you right up close.
Cuz you're the one I love the most.
Right up there with my mom and daughter.
Just like Sponge Bob loves his water.
I cannot love you with a hat,
I cannot feel you wearing that.
I cannot love you with a glove,
I just can't bear conditional love.
I can love you here and now.
Hear my heart go Boom Boom Pow!
Six Significant Landscapes
I
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds.
II
The night is of the colour
Of a woman's arm:
Night, the female,
Obscure,
Fragrant and supple,
Conceals herself.
A pool shines,
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance.
III
I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Nevertheless, I dislike
The way ants crawl
In and out of my shadow.
IV
When my dream was near the moon,
The white folds of its gown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair filled
With certain blue crystallizations
From stars,
Not far off.
V
Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,
Nor the chisels of the long streets,
Nor the mallets of the domes
And high towers,
Can carve
What one star can carve,
Shining through the grape-leaves.
VI
Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses --
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --
Rationalists would wear sombreros.
Far shiver I
And at the
Ferns
The arms…
Mountains, myriad of
touches of my
desire …of
Your dreams
I Am;
Your much burned
Love…fingered
Entirely…resides
World away
Beside my I
The heart shiver
is great as…
Cliffs leaping
And the land
Needle echoing excitement…
Dark canyons, rushes,
Tendrils
Of I through
Mystery
will have my
Shared flesh…
Passion
And your breath
Enter blood
I by now
Am thee
My dim possessed
Thoughts
Roar by…are
Of growing
Blown
By memory,
Leaping water,
Four winds
I…and your
Stillness
Have I imagined
Have felt
Your love…
And Death grows
With me
(by Kevin Kroft?)
I am not my house.
It is just a place that keeps my body warm and dry.
I am not my car.
It is just a way to get me from point A to B.
I am not my body.
It is just a house for my spirit.
I am not my words.
They are just a vehicle for my thoughts.
I am not Kevin Kroft.
That is just a name some people use to get my attention.
Others use ‘Hey man’ and ‘Sir’
Which are equally accurate.
I am not my thoughts.
I am the awareness of thought.
I did not write this,
But my essence runs through it.
I am compassion, appreciation, and art.
I am love, friendship, and a sense of family.
I am you, and you are me,
And we are as different as we are the same.
Can’t you see the truth?
Seeing is believing,
But to see,
You have to look.
Nature's lonely toy
Avoiding pain
Run from the rain
In this great game
Like a moth to a flame
So, have at least one goal
Play your pointless role
The clash of things
In it, truth rings
What made you construct that poem like that?
The silence
Of no applause
For the subway singer
Speaks louder than feigned
Appreciation, than fetishized fawning:
The standing ovation of the deaf sheep herd.
Maybe true feeling is only met with silence, the silence
Of no return to the question of why the silence brings a silent feeling.
Like when the inner flame of thought is quelled by the outer frame of discursive
judgment; the embarrassing lisp of the inner infinite first feeling; the apologetic laugh,
crafted to avert the penetration of an eye; coital fumbling blocked by the self-preservation of an unknown inner kingdom. There’s room here, too, for more obfuscation, for the cover-up white lie of the finally finding feeling that shades itself from summer heat, from the summer salvage of the sickening orange-like glow – no, bell pepper yellow, and succulent sweet too, like it’s turgid crunch – the crunch of newfound yellow-tinged snow beneath the size 5 boots that blast through the unknown, through the sickly, no…the orange…the haze-yellow after-sex glow…
Something about the engendered ambiguity? What makes anyone construct any poem the way they do? It's not always possible to articulate without losing something, like explaining a joke, I suppose. Do you have a reason for the way your poem above is constructed?
Ha! Exactly. Your answer is excellent. But, with two words, you said all you need to say: "engendered ambiguity". I sensed something sensual in your poem, and your further description not only confirms, but further enlightens my initial feeling with regards to it. Well done.
As to mine, I just wrote that today, so the feeling is very fresh. The weird structure was not initial; that came later. The feeling of talking about "silence" led to the irony of a poem about "silence" getting larger and larger; so I allowed myself to become more and more verbose.
Ah, a silence that grows with verbosity; I like it! 8-)
8-) I really liked the idea! It came from witnessing an older guy on the subway very quietly play his tune on his guitar, while singing. Something about "I'm tired of hate". I thought...sure, me too.
Hey, cool stuff! I'm a musician, so I have no conception of how you make those sculptures. Sorry that sounds so clueless. I would love to be able to sculpt peoples faces. Well done.
teach me to love
You my soul, my life, my all.
Teach me to pray
The prayers of silent adoration
Teach me to obey
The commandments of blissful submission
Teach me to study
The ecstasies of your rapturous embrace.
Teach me to forget
The prudish nit picking of the blind ones
Lord,
Lead me
Till I am lost in You.
Inspired by Plotinus' first Ennead
Porto has a statue for just about every square
Sorry meant to reply to this. No real conscious commentary there but sounds fine to me.
Been there. Lovely place. Nice renditions (Y)
"The future is the drink that makes the present sweet." (Y)
Hmmm....had not heard that before.
Very nice collection. I am drawn into the Black and White for some reason which is odd as I am usually all about the colors. The Buffalo reminds me of the song Buffalo Soldier but I might be dating myself in saying that.
Either way keep snappin!
The Wait
Deep in a fear-infused limbo,
Waiting for God’s silent gavel.
Weaving wisps of hope,
Into a blanket of dread.
My heart struggles to beat,
In a phobic death clutch.
Blood flowing in a panic,
To escape this looming terror.
Muscles straining against collapse,
The walls imbued with frail faith.
Anger boils up inside,
Seeking worthy targets.
A war of words and emotions,
Who will strike the killing blow?
Hurry soldiers, sit and wait!
Time is a formidable foe…
Maybe ask Santa for something like this so you'll be more on time.
Starts and fits learning structure
Printed track support- blue and white are plastic and brown is printed in wood
Infinite Triangles
Fibonacci sequences
Working Nut and Bolt
Escher's Geese
The Character he plays
At the fringes of the Everglades, the ARM Loxahatchee NWR not that far away from me
What a beautiful day, bright, clear, dry and not too hot...it was perfect
Lucky shot lol.
Is this a self portrait, Baden?
Yes, that's me observing some recent posts on here.
[url=https://postimages.org/]
:up:
This one hangs on the wall in my apartment. The outside edges aren't as detailed as the middle -- I was going for a "stretched out" effect all across the paper. The 2nd photo just zooms in a bit on the middle to show some of the detail.
Also, I'm not super fond of the rest of this piece, but I did really like this one part:
It's just fun to play with patterns and see if you can come up with something semi-unique or interesting.
What's a butcher paper?
Awesome work!
It's paper that's meant to wrap up meat or fish, but is often used for all sorts of other crafty things.
Thanks. :)
Ah, the noble comma. Let us not take its great worth for granted.
Or perhaps you are signaling the structure of our words, and by extension the structure of our thoughts and minds, without which we might confuse the very meaning of ourselves and our lives.
Masterful minimalism.
? !
.
Ah. Yes, I got one from a boxed furniture. It's a long paper, good quality.
The period, of course. Signifying, as the French would say, la fin, and pointing us to the truth: the transitory nature of all things. Could there be a more profoundly final statement? I think not.
Ps: I’m a little stoned
}
I don't know if you have seen this but for those that doodle? I think this is AWESOME! You pull out fresh paper as you need it and roll the used paper into a scroll. For someone like me who keeps calendars as a record of sorts this is a huge discovery. It would be something I would love to inherit from someone like my Mom, to read her life right there on paper. An amazing diary without realizing you are entering in it.
Cat Story
At noon, I paused. I turned and took a picture of my cat. I let the cat out, then uploaded the picture to my laptop. My desktop wallpaper was an older picture, of a different cat. I opened up the new picture and changed the tone to sepia. It made the picture feel old-timey. I imagined my cat as a gunslinger in the wild west and laughed.
From next door came the muffled sound of a classic rock station. All the hits, I thought. Gifts from our fathers, I thought.
Cold light came through the kitchen window. There was still frost on the ground. A million frosted blades of grass. I imagined that I was the size of a bug and that I was walking through the lawn.
I coughed once, held my breath, then coughed twice more in quick succession.
The world is getting old, I thought. The temples have all crumbled. I imagined my cat as a scavenger and myself as a wizened druid, forgotten, squatting among toppled masonry. I imagined that my cat felt guilty because he was a scavenger. I imagined myself rising slowly, from behind a great stone block, and walking to him, offering him absolution.
I poured some coffee and sat at the kitchen table, staring out the window. I could hear the neighbors arguing. After a while, the neighbors’ kids appeared in the lawn and began playing a halfhearted game of catch.
I imagined that the neighbors’ kids were old eskimos and that my cat had put them on an ice floe and pushed them out to sea. The air would be cold and salty all at once. I imagined the salt clinging to their eyelashes as their bodies grew cold and their minds slowly evaporated into the icy air. Maybe, in their senility, they would imagine that they were their parents and begin arguing. I imagined them dying that way, arguing, as my cat stoically mushed his sleddogs back inland.
I began to leaf through the pile of unopened mail on the kitchen table. A bill, a bill, some coupons, a letter from my brother. A postcard. The neon nightscape of Reno on one side, my brother’s sprawling handwriting on the other. He was getting married, he said. I know it’s weird to tell you in a postcard, he said, but I thought you would like the picture. She’s thirty-five, he said, and she’s been married once before. She says everyone has two great loves in them, he said, and that the second one is the truest. She studied theology, he said, but she is not a priest.
I imagined that my brother was in AA and that my cat was his sponsor. I imagined them playing scrabble in a diner at night, drinking coffee and talking about how you have to take it one day a time.
The neighbors kids had stopped playing catch and appeared to be trying to pick the lock of the apartment next door. By now the frost had melted. The older one, the girl, appeared to be frustrated with her brother. Her eyes were big and she was gesturing violently. I watched with satisfaction as my cat appeared from around the corner of the building and walked coolly past them.
The vessels have all broken, I imagined my cat saying, and I alone persist.
Needs a bit of an edit here and there in my view, but it's a lot better than "Cat Person" :) . I interpret it as the cat being the narrators' "magic" or free self that can roam outside while he is one of the "broken vessels", "the wizened old man", stuck inside. The magic self, the scavenger, can still get something from society whereas to him there is nothing of substance left out there "the temples have crumbled". The magic self is able to "stoically" handle the problems of the cold social world, such as the fact that kids lose their identity and turn into their frustrated parents. The cat/magic self alone persists as everything else [s]false[/s] falls apart. The narrator then gets to have his cake and eat it; he can stay locked away from the world and remain morally suitably perturbed by it whereas his magic self can explore it unperturbed, and heroically (like a "gunslinger in the wild west" ) traverse its painful landscape.
Well, the first draft ended with him texting the cat 'ur a sult' but I've grown a lot in the past four years. Now it's just implied that he thinks the cat is a sult (which he is.) Thanks for the feedback, and interpretation. It's funny - I wrote story about 4 years ago on a lazy day off work, drinking coffee and scrolling facebook. I've always been kind of fascinated by the 'flatness' of older's people facebook presence. Of course that's probably just attributable to their lack of familiarity with social media, but I thought it would be fun to do a story in the voice of someone who really was that flat (" 'all the hits,' i thought'' etc.) But then as I kept writing, it became a little stream of conscious-y and ---- I think your interpretation is dead on. It's basically a unintentional 'schizoid' self-portrait.
https://vimeo.com/187837105
That's pretty cool :up: . Did you make the video too?
Nice one.
Thanks; no, just the music. The dancers improvised their movements within a short space on the walkway when no one else was walking; slowed down, I like how it makes the pedestrians almost part of the choreography, so I tried to accent those moments with the music. I could watch that footage over and over again indefinitely, regardless of any music. What's cool is that I think this collab highlights differences of philosophical perspective; the filmmaker is a self-proclaimed "Duchampist", which comes through in his approach to setting and direction of the dancers. But I'm not a follower of Duchamp at all, and what I saw in the movements was Kairos, as opposed to Chronos (Greek words for time; Kairos being the opportune moment when the divine "timelessness" cuts through into finite "timeness", etc). So, conflicting viewpoints working together to create something that creates the opportunity for yet more viewpoints.
Edit: I love the guy's embarrassed smile around 2:10. A hardened New Yorker finally shaken out of his shell.
I "co-produced" this track, which means my dear friend Charlene wrote and partially arranged it, and then sent it to me for completion. I changed some song structure stuff, removed some stuff, and then added some of my own stuff. My only problem is that I did a rough mix, but was late on delivering a final (my fault), and so she had her other mix guy do a mix. The mix is not that great. Nuances are lost. Dynamics, especially. But I love her melody and lyrics enough that I can look past it (I guess). The emotion still mostly comes through. [headphones recommended, to pick up the nuances that are barely there...anyway...]
Sounds good to me. :_)
Get's awesomely close to spiritual singing in some Arabic fashion at the halfway point.
Thanks! Isn't she great? I can listen to her sing all day; I'm lucky enough to have her singing on some tracks of mine as well, forthcoming.
Superb, I would say.
Right? I had nothing to do with that section (vocally); her friend originally did it, singing a Mahmoud Darwish poem, but she decided to do it herself, and totally killed it; hearing both versions, her updated version elevated it to something totally different.
Oof. Thanks! Sadly I had more to do with the moments where the drones are broken by actual chord progressions; not because that's my thing; just because that's what the track needed, occasionally.
Still listening to the Bass Communion shit I posted, because I'm a stickler. Will check out the Darwish poem asap. :up:
I like the poem. I mean this in the worst possible way, but the rhythm reminds me of the sort of stuff I write. This person seems to have a better sense of community, though. Translation is always awkward, but it's good.
Exactly; those chord changes are mine. I was so inspired by this song though, because her melody so strongly suggests a chord progression; It's so rare to work with a vocalist so intuitive that he/she can just sing melodies that basically create their own chord progressions. So, with this track, I had the luxury of deciding how and in which context, if any, I wanted to highlight the chordal structure that she was suggesting, intuitively, with her voice. Thankfully, the way I did it ended up working for her; she agreed with how I heard it.
Quoting ?????????????
Oh totally, the backbone of the track, in terms of emotion, is the "drones". But I think that the melody, especially the chorus, is what carries the track from point to point.
Quoting ?????????????
Same; I don't know. Hearing the translation sounds really nice. I don't know what that means.
Quoting ?????????????
Word. That's his big piece, for whatever that means. Molotov And Haze is waaaay better.
:starstruck:
[definitely not for everyone]
Did you "get [un]creative"? What happened?
I want you (I don't want much).
I want you
To feel the heart beneath my skin
And honour flesh and blood within;
To let me be as rich or poor
As Nature, and to give me more.
I want you
To know me more and tell me less,
Forgive what I do not confess,
And take the pain I cruelly give
With joy, and let my cruelty live.
I want you
To be whatever I should choose,
To be yourself for me to use,
To let me win and never lose,
To be the fool that I abuse.
I want you
To leave me free and hold me tight,
Make love in ecstasy all night,
But let me sleep till morning light
And make my wrongs to you all right
I want you
To let me know that I am wise
And always do as I advise.
Love honour and obey, and I
Will want you till the day I die.
You were my exaltation and delight
Like April blossoms on a cherry tree
You made new life from water and sun's light.
I came to you and played inside your shade
And in your soft and gentle aura bathed
I sang to you a starlight serenade
And underneath your leaves my soul misplaced.
I left it there, and it is there still
But I got lost and can find you no more,
Was it the inspiration? Was it will?
I'm shorn of everything that I adore.
I saw in you the energy of love
And everything that's holy and divine,
And I can't say "my darling one" enough:
You were more tasty than the vintage wine.
Now I will never hold your hands again
Or press my lips to you or touch your heart,
I'll write you many poems, all in vain,
And we are many, many miles apart,
My soul is lost - where will it reappear?
I cannot find it - will you help me please?
Will you remember me or shed a tear
As I am calling you among the trees?
You lift, alight, become airborne and fly
And lift my soul where it would never go,
And as I look at you and ask you why
You only answer me, I told you so.
But what, alas? I'm gazing from afar
And maybe it is better off this way
For you, by now, have become a star
And I now dream of every yesterday.
Always sew irony into the ends of a procreative wish.
The poet spoke (trembling with desire for an epidemic resurrection of a classic order) into the netted abyss. Another sent a probe.
What came back first was a trickle, then a flow, then a torrential mixture of brutalizing elements: the globe itself came in force, shattering to the poet's call.
Waves of liquefied clay poured through the valleys carrying forth the macerated bodies of post-postmodern poets and other mediocre indiscernibles, plastic bags, foam, tires, bottles, broken bits of lumber, swirling in untidy currents around the poet's life boat.
Vast collections of unread poetry, soaked, churned and remade, rendered back to him his wishes in a mass slurry of a newly naturalized and fluid gibberish.
And there were no walls to stop the floods of babble.
There were boats to float above the floods of babble.
_________________
Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three bodies in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
Anyone and everyone
And all of them out to sea.
Abyss has opened full of stars.
Pluto to Venus, Moon to Mars -
We see the universal force
Charting the cosmos from its source.
Abyss of stars; in stars, abyss -
From depths to heights - from ague to bliss -
The life is manifest in all -
In every part, key to the whole -
In whole, key to every part.
The mind to soul, the breath to heart -
All of life's pieces intertwined
And through the synthesis refined.
The void in me, the stars in you -
The will to be, the sight that's true -
Will intermingle and imbue
The world with light of every hue,
That will commingle into white
And frame and sanctify the night
Shining throughout the day with sun -
And in the night, when course is run,
Return again to their source
And be the parcels. And of course
Inside each star, its own piece
Of wisdom, ecstasy and bliss.
Abyss has opened, full of stars.
Come with me darling, let us parse
The code contained within the whole
Into the knowledge of the soul.
We are the stars; we are the void -
The burning passion is employed
To light the path, to guide the way
And let the cosmic forces play
Within the whole, as holes within
Are by the interplay worn thin
And disappear in the night
To reabsorb into the light.
Galactic wisdom knows it all;
Spacetime collapsed in a black hole
As world around it rushes by
And man asks what, and how, and why;
The incongruity within -
The passions torn, the mind worn thin -
Reflect the daylight and the night
In endless love; in endless fight.
Through all abysses in the space -
Through all that in abysses plays -
Through quasars, galaxies, red shift -
Through truth, invention and deceit -
Through spirit's longing and heart's pain -
Through reasoned words and speech insane -
Through passion, terror and delight -
Through day and twilight and the night -
In all that lives; in all that's here
In ocean, island, atmosphere
In jungle, desert, tundra, steppe
In every place on which I step -
In atom cracked, its core undone -
In colors blending into one -
In forces crumbling on themselves -
In the commingling of the selves -
In space collapsed and rearranged -
In mind extended and deranged -
In lyre of life, in drum of death -
In Keats, Neruda, Rumi, Plath -
In senses shattered to the core
Till Present touches Evermore -
In every minute flung ajar -
I be abyss; you be the star.
My elegant angel of love,
Past all destruction and danger
You soar just like a dove -
Over the lapping ocean
And past the mountains green,
Tenderness, warmth, devotion
And softness - like a dream
Soothing, caressing, inviting,
Making soul live and bloom,
In all that's sweet delighting -
Dispelling all the gloom -
Spirit so warm, so tender,
Heart delicate and sweet
In all your paintings rendered
And in your life complete -
Sing to me, my delightful!
Let your delicious voice
Carry the truth, inspire all,
And let the life rejoice
In your delicious beauty,
Your kindness, softness, grace -
You, that the wrong refuted!
You, that despair erased!
Speak to me, my sweet angel!
Speak all you know and see,
Let me be your avenger
Let me set your heart free
Be inspiration, darling!
Be my delight and joy!
Beauty and light imparting -
Shackles of mind destroy!
Carry the truth, and kindness,
And all that's good and true -
With light of soul, end blindness!
With love, dark souls imbue!
Be what love is, angelic,
Tender, impassioned, warm -
Powerful, psychedelic,
Like sunlight - like a storm -
Out of which come flowers
And bring the world to life:
All of the truth, empower!
Make world with passion rife!
You! That they claim unreal -
You are the truth sublime!
All that is good, congealed in
Personhood of you! Shine,
Bring light to those who need it
And others still, caress -
See what is tortured? Heal it.
See what is tender? Bless:
Take the mind through derangement
And make it true - enough!
My angel! My darling angel!
My exquisite angel of love!
Bearing on his crown a spinning wheel of glowing gold,
Boring into his mind's eye
Bleeding from his temples
The gift of the waters in four directions.
Whilst Mother
Bearing in her womb
Father's own replacement
Heaved in pains of labor,
Bleeding forth the oceans,
The gift of the waters in four directions.
Brother,
Pained to see the wheel spinning on his aging Father's head,
Was struck by the wounded world and its costly gifts,
Crying loudly against it all:
This wheel is not for me.
This wheel is not for me.
This wheel is not for me.
This wheel is not for me.
And a voice spoke out
From nowhere and everywhere at once.
Who is the wheel for if not for thee?
You are an inspiration to a wallower
To wallow is healthy; but, you choose to not.
This wallower is confused, why don't you wallow too.
Spending time wallowing on these forums, you bring this wallower a smile too,
Ok, I'll stop the horrific attempt at haiku.
Almost edible!
Infrared and, well,
Ultraviolet!
Full of warmth and light -
Gorgeous, timeless sight
Taking mind on flight
To the never-land.
Your blonde hair swings down
On your velvet gown -
In you voices drown,
Like in concert hall.
Unbelievable!
Inconceivable!
Sun will rise and fall
On your gorgeous soul.
My enchantress, you!
Giant eyes of blue
Like a cloud that flew
Over turquoise skies
Singing melodies
Of the galaxies
Ending fallacies
And becoming wise.
Gentle like a dove,
You are queen of love -
I can't get enough
Of your tenderness!
Goddess of the sea!
How you sing to me
How I long to be
In your soft caress!
Cherry blossom, you!
All that's good and true!
Pink and white and blue
Like a carnival,
Like a rainbow, free!
How you spell-bind me!
How I long to be
In your darling soul!
In your love I'll swim
And your voice will sing
An eternal hymn -
No regret at all!
Inexorable!
Most adorable!
Uncontrollable!
Unforgettable!
Disgrace - and honor,
All, that brings on thoughtfulness,
Is spilling over -
In me. - All the penal passions
Become as one! -
All images wage war inside
This hair of mine!
The lover's whisper, all around
By rote I know,
Experience of twenty two years
Nothing but sorrow!
But - won't you say - innocently pink
Look I,
I'm virtuoso's virtuoso
In art of lies.
In her let out like a ball,
Caught once again,
The blood of Polish great-grandmoms
Is evident.
I lie because in cemeteries
The grass does grow,
I lie because in cemeteries
Snowstorm does blow...
From violin - from automobile -
From silk, from fire...
From torment that not only me
They all desired!
From pain, that I am not the bride
Of the groom...
From poem and gesture - for the gesture
And for the poem!
From tender boa on the neck...
And how can I
Not lie - when my voice sounds more tender
When I do lie...
By Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Through the thinness of the morning air,
It will penetrate your eyes of blue
And remain inside your heart forever.
I will send a piece of me to you
Over poppies, vilets and roses,
It will vanish in a church's pew
And resurface where your soul reposes.
I will send a piece of me to you -
You alone in all of humankind -
It will disappear from my view
And become a figment of your mind.
I will send a piece of me to you -
Nowhere else I'd send it to instead -
I will tell you to take it - take two -
And retain them all inside your head.
I will send a piece of me to you
Over oceans and over lands,
It will be so supple and so new -
Mold it, mold it, mold it with your hands.
I will send a piece of me to you -
A created piece, a piece complete -
Let it be your own, I say this too,
To just trample underneath your feet.
I will send a piece of me to you
I do not know where, nor even when,
I will send it how, I wish I knew,
To expire and live in you again.
I will send pieces of me to you
In the winter, summer, spring and fall,
And inside your being they'll accrue
Until I am none and we are all.
Isaac has built a graying pigeon cage
The crozier irritates the graying quiet
Gradations of the air the heart can gauge.
There's wandering ghost of century-old requiem
Then the grand bearing of the shroud
Genessarian* darkness in decrepit seine
Of week of Lent, before the crowd.
Upon warm altars smoke glows
And then a priest exudes an orphaned cry
A regal man: there is clean snow
On the shoulders, and savage porphyry.
Sophie's and Peter's Grand Cathedrals that withstood
Centuries; warehouses of air and light
Grain hangars of the universal good
And corn-kilns of New Testament.
In the harsh troubled year, not to your side
The spirit drags across the steps in peace,
The wolf's trail of disaster reaches wide
And will not change over the centuries.
Free is the slave who once has conquered fear
And who beyond all measure kept, through grief,
In deep cornbins, in chilly granaries
The grain of utter and complete belief.
By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Race your spacecraft, pickle me nice. Race your spacecraft, egg spinach rice. Race your spacecraft, what's over there? Race your spacecraft, strawberry éclair.
And it surely won’t make me rich
In the face of all those who hate them
I announce: I love the French.
For De Tocqueville and Voltaire
For L’Enfant who designed DC
For the fact that without their
Aid the US would never have come to be
For Dumas, Joan of Arc, Exupery
Doctors without Borders, and
For a civilized society,
Low crime rates and beautiful land
For their gorgeous, passionate women
For Cezanne and for Gaughin
For wine valleys, chateux – earth heaven -
For Riviera, Paris, Sorbonne
For their foreign aid to the poor
And diplomatic outreach -
There is one thing I know for sure:
Hear me saying: I love the French.
My elegant angel of love,
Past all destruction and danger
You soar just like a dove -
Over the lapping ocean
And past the mountains green,
Tenderness, warmth, devotion
And softness - like a dream
Soothing, caressing, inviting,
Making soul live and bloom,
In all that's sweet delighting -
Dispelling all the gloom -
Spirit so warm, so tender,
Heart delicate and sweet
In all your paintings rendered
And in your life complete -
Sing to me, my delightful!
Let your delicious voice
Carry the truth, inspire all,
And let the life rejoice
In your delicious beauty,
Your kindness, softness, grace -
You, that the wrong refuted!
You, that despair erased!
Speak to me, my sweet angel!
Speak all you know and see,
Let me be your avenger
Let me set your heart free
Be inspiration, darling!
Be my delight and joy!
Beauty and light imparting -
Shackles of mind destroy!
Carry the truth, and kindness,
And all that's good and true -
With light of soul, end blindness!
With love, dark souls imbue!
Be what love is, angelic,
Tender, impassioned, warm -
Powerful, psychedelic,
Like sunlight - like a storm -
Out of which come flowers
And bring the world to life:
All of the truth, empower!
Make world with passion rife!
You! That they claim unreal -
You are the truth sublime!
All that is good, congealed in
Personhood of you! Shine,
Bring light to those who need it
And others still, caress -
See what is tortured? Heal it.
See what is tender? Bless:
Take the mind through derangement
And make it true - enough!
My angel! My darling angel!
My exquisite angel of love!
Trial - by misunderstanding,
Spines together - crevasse between.
Look to side - step into exile,
Hands like briars - limp at the seams.
Through seams of nerves, joints and sinews
Blood does not gush - it drips from pores,
And not a man - a man's likeness
And all in surplus - excess of nerves.
-2-
Heart ahead - through body the current flows,
Eyes away - in darkness to look,
Heat, and cold, and in ribs the arrows
Spine on spine beat out a spark.
Hands are touching - just like dry branches,
It is time - to start the game must.
Where eyes play, where the body's rejected,
Where success and failure compare the cost.
Like a sword's stroke - sharp eyes opening:
To make prisoner and take away.
Two lakes - light, two lakes of sorrows,
To freeze - like a boa at prey.
And smoothness, and depth, and silence -
Play of crystals liquefied
Sin original, warmth and light too...
Understanding nonverbal - through the eyes.
-3-
Trial by misunderstanding,
Spines - and if sometime
To turn around in fit of delirium
With landslide of feeling - eye to eye -
But to cease in the blind enlightenment,
Not to fall - only to sway,
And to continue, moment to moment,
And with lips to fall into lake.
By Lubov Sokolovsky
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
The hearts were beating in three beats and not in twain.
And ladies were inviting gentlemen
To a traditional white waltz - and took the breath away.
And you, that dance with sorrow together,
Decided to invite that one girl long ago -
But you must always leave to go somewhere -
To help somebody or to ready for a war.
And all, still closer, the more real it becomes,
She, one with whom you had intended to come in,
She comes in order to invite you to the waltz -
And in your temple blood was pounding.
Externally calm in a ball full of noise,
You're given away by the shadow of yours -
She tore, and broke, and trembled in blurry light, as you spun.
Held gently by the hand, and whirling her like mad,
And you could have put her across a knife's blade
So why do you stand, crossing arms, not your own and no one's?
It was white waltz - the end to doubts of unbelievers
And end of childhood consolations, dreams and games -
Today the ladies were inviting cavaliers
And not because the latter weren't brave.
The ladies are called forth in time of ball
And waltz spins heads around, like long before.
But we must always answer someone's call -
To help somebody or get ready for a war.
Whiter than snow is the white waltz, spin now, strive!
That snow does not get interrupted as it falls!
She came in order to invite you to a life -
And you were white - whiter than walls, whiter than waltz!
Wherever you were - in the lyceum, in the tavern -
In palace halls, in school - whatever luck despite -
In Russia ladies were inviting gentlemen
In every age to the white waltz, and all was white.
Dulling the sight, not looking to each side,
Through the despair, silence, quiet, resignation,
The women hurried to come to our aid -
Their hall - the size of the entire nation.
Where you will go, wherever you will fly
Recall the waltz - how you were white - and smile, you'll learn:
They'll wait forever - and from sea and from the sky -
They will invite you to white waltz when you return.
By Vladimir Vysotsky
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
My sister haunts the servers among the early dead
Each photograph reposted, lost, it should remain unsaid
That a spectacle of grief where no tear graces a head
Is muted fury serving none except the one who owns the thread
I’ve forgotten her face, her name, now silence is her tongue
A bricolage of sorrow speaks for noisy revision
To vandalize and substitute, when all is said and done
Nothing remains except a trace of strangers having fun
If I could find my affectation in this rabble of the sad
I’d ask each and all for quiet and to stop feeding the fad
That subdivides and analyses every word they ever had
Each pattern advertises tombstones for epigraphs
And god forbid in weakness should I drown in sponsorship
You reduced her from a memory to another asset stripped
I wish you’d flayed her in the flesh than ripped and raped her for a tip
that comes in hollow climax whenever we submit
You hold her in a prism that casts remembrance as a ghost
To remind us all for one and all the community you host
Is a movie you created for a lonely symbiote
That works in words for nothing earned when all returns to dust
Hagia Sofia -- here to stop and stare
The Lord has ordered people and the tsars!
Your dome, as an eyewitness once described it,
As if by chains is hanging from the stars.
2.
To all a shining light -- age of Justinian,
When to steal off for foreign gods unseen
Dedicated Diana the Ephesian
Hundred and seven marble columns green.
3.
To what aspired your generous creator,
When high in spirit and in reason blessed,
He laid your features on the ground
And pointed them directions east and west?
4.
The temple shines, in the world's aura bathing,
And forty windows -- triumph of the light;
On sails under the dome the four archangels
Finest of all and basking in delight.
5.
This building will outlast people and ages
So wise and spherical and nobly built
And incandescent weeping of the angels
Will not corrode away the darkened gilt.
By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Connected over the distance -
Our nerves together intertwined
And in their center, Our Existence -
Heartbeat to heartbeat - will to will -
Passion to passion - and to reason:
Keeping us in there from the chill
In every day - in every season -
And in the middle - in the core -
Were our own centers: In this bubble
They will be there, forevermore,
All times protected from the trouble.
The walls us from the world will keep
And in there we will be together:
In day, in night, in wake, in sleep
Like swallow safe within her feathers.
We made a bubble of our souls -
How hard it was though to sustain it!
To wait all day for you to call -
To keep away all that was tainted -
To keep alive, this heart to heart,
This mind to mind, this soul to soul,
To love you though we be apart -
And to retain this perfect whole:
The mental energy it took
Made me make most of every moment
My spirit tore, my body shook,
And I was in a passion's torment -
And then the bubble's walls concussed
As all its contents lay there scattered:
Eternal, present and the past
Of both the spirit and the matter.
The bubble burst; walls fell apart
And what was thought inside protected -
The throbbing souls, the beating hearts -
Were there, open and dissected.
It was as though the skin was flayed
As centers lay there undefended
I felt destroyed; you felt betrayed -
But something happened unintended:
I saw the beauty that is you,
You saw how much I cared for you,
I saw you from a closer view
And knew indeed that I adore you:
The bubble burst and spilt its core
But yet the dream has not been shattered:
I see you – clearer than before -
And I can love you even better.
Great poem. :ok:
Mermaid-like, she will call
Her tenderness and devotion
Nurturing one and all
Over the crashing billows
Ethereal, she will roam
Reclining as if on pillows
On incandescent foam
On the backs of playing dolphins
In the call of the whales
Raising the sunfish orphans
Petting bass on the scales
Constructing on the corals
Palaces and enclaves
Settling the fights and quarrels
Under and over the waves -
I'll find my love in the mountains
Peaks of the Tian Shan
Her magnificent countenance
Like glaciers reflecting the sun
Basking in wind and sunlight
Clearing the air of dust
From sunrise and until twilight
Making the beauty last
I'll find my love in the tundra
Under the permafrost
Where would she be, I'll wonder
As I am wandering lost
Petting the polar bears
Giving them her sweet light
Lost to all worldly cares
Bringing the Earth delight
I'll find my love in the Congo
In heart of the Abyss
Seeing the fear and wrong and
Turning it into bliss
I'll find my love in the cloud
Splashing in endless blue
Vanquishing every doubt
Making the dreams come true
I'll find my love in the thunder
Rumbling through autumn air
Turning the mind from blunder
And spirit from despair
I'll find my love in the cosmos -
Heart of the Milky Way -
Playing with laws and causes
Turning the night to day
I'll find my love everywhere
And before I die
I'll send her name as a prayer
Into the clear blue sky.
I see the world in brown:
The colors mix completely
And in each other drown
Creating a commingling
Expressing every view
Through merger and intriguing
Revealing what is true -
When I am looking death-ward
I see the world in black
Where the ungentle shepherd
Leads toward a wayward track,
Where millions of creatures
Feed on the human ghosts
And lawyers, dressed as preachers,
Proclaim the heaven lost.
When I look at the clouds
I see the world in gray:
The hopes and the doubts
In them together play
And through their interaction -
All facets merged in one -
Bring lightning and refraction
Of rays of setting sun.
When I am with my loved one
I see the world in pink
The spirit-cloud above me
Reshaping all I think
Feeling my essence nurtured
And brought into sweet love -
Her heart, like gentle orchid,
Enfolds me in a glove.
When I burn with desire
I see the world in red:
My heart becomes a pyre
Inside which burns my head
And as it turns to embers
Where all things fleshly die,
My spirit soars and clambers
And falls into the sky.
When I am being rained on
The world is orange-clad,
The conic and Ukrainian
Combine inside my head
To manifest in eros
That courses through all life
And, through the trials and errors,
At consciousness arrives.
When I am full of glamor
The world is yellow, and
It turns into a lemon
And into shifting sand
From which, with just some patience,
I make a lemonade
That feeds the respiration
And all of me pervades.
When I am feeling open
I see the world in green
In which I feel and hope and
Know goodliness and sin
And, seeing the whole landscape
From elevated view
Conquer the inner wasteland
And make it bloom anew.
When I am full of willpower
I see the world in blue
And, certain, build a tower
That seeks attainment to
The transcendental wisdom
Of sky and ocean waves
Which holds the truth and freedom
And love that goodness saves.
When I am full of soul
In indigo am I
Feeling the cosmic whole
Expressed within the sky
That reaches earth with wisdom
Of millions of stars
And nurtures me, assisting
The healing of the scars.
When I am in a prayer
I feel the violet light
Reaching my spirit, where
It casts the lies aside -
Burning into the essence
With penetrating rays
And teaching many lessons,
From gratitude to praise -
And after darkest hour
Of darkest of the night
I'm happy as a flower
To see the world in white.
Is sleeping in the camping tent
She looks delightful, peaceful, free -
What more can anyone demand?
Her hair soft grass, her breath a breeze,
Each gentle movement of her chest
A way to stars, a way to seas,
Another place for birds to nest;
The birds that chirp by gushing brook
And in the gum tree canopies;
But there's no place I'd rather look
Than at my darling Melanie -
As she sleeps softly next to me
Delight of body and of mind
My darling, darling Melanie!
My love, my star, my friend, my bride!
How ravishing the Russian evenings are
Love, and champagne, and sunsets over alleys
And walks and the amusements in the summer -
How ravishing the Russian evenings are.
Beautiful women, lackeys, servants, there they are
The waltz of Schubert and the crumbling of french bread and
Love, and champagne, and sunsets over alleys -
How ravishing the Russian evenings are.
How ravishing the Russian evenings are
Sunset aflame and shining like a band and
Only the heavens in the blue eyes of the poet -
How ravishing the Russian evenings are
May all be dream, may love be game - wherefore
For you are all my passion and embraces?
But in this world my memory remains of
How ravishing the Russian evenings are.
May all be dream, may love be game - wherefore
For you are all my passion and embraces?
But in this world my memory remains of
How ravishing the Russian evenings are.
By White Eagle
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
But my love for you isn't:
My heart is with my mind,
My soul is with my reason.
I know why I love you,
And it's completely real:
And unified and true:
I think it, and I feel it:
I love you for your heart,
Your sweetness and compassion,
I love you since you're smart
And filled with joy and passion,
I love you for your warmth
And excellence and wisdom;
For lights that through you course
In every time and season -
For beauty that you are
Both outside and inside,
Because you are a star
In nature and in mindset -
I love you for you will
To help, and for your honor:
For where you've gone and been
And came out all the stronger:
I love you for your grace
And for your dedication
To good deeds; your soft face
And glorious inspiration -
For your resplendent gifts
And what you're doing with them -
And all you are - it is
Completely true to reason:
I love you for your light
And unremitting kindness
All times of day and night -
No, my love is not mindless:
I love you for I see
The wonder that you're truly
And from it comes to be
The passion reasoned fully:
My heart and mind are clear
And doubt they both cast out
And there is nothing here
That's blind or not thought out:
I love you with my mind
And heart and strength and spirit
No, my love is not blind -
It's unified: So feel it.
Lift your lovely eyes up to Christmas heavens,
Conjure up the substance of your dreams,
Before you in my life I was never this happy,
Just for you, as you love them, it seems,
Take these flowers from me.
I'm in love with you to tears,
Every sigh just like first time,
Rather than more pretty lies
This rose cloud, my dear.
With the petals of white rose
I will carpet our home,
I'm in love with you to tears,
I'm in love madly.
In the splendor of your majestic hair,
In the whiteness of your hypnotizing skin
I take a delight, you are the most dear,
All has just begun between you and me.
I'm in love with you to tears,
Every sigh just like first time,
Rather than more pretty lies
This rose cloud, my dear.
With the petals of white rose
I will carpet our home,
I'm in love with you to tears,
I'm in love madly.
By Alexandr Serov
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Is weaving her web again
The lights of the street lamps are wider
And branches are drenched with rain
The light of the moon pours diffusely
Through fog upon the ground,
The headlights of cars shine profusely
And through them the web is wound -
Night cloudy and full of vapor:
Night foggy that pours forth soul
The den of enchanted she-spider
Holds heart and then makes it whole
Caressing, expressing, impressing -
Delirium it will instil
To all of the world's faults confessing
And from it forging Will
Which she will in her web hold
And make it bear great fruit:
Who knows it? Who ever told?
And if so, who could refute?
The glorious enchanted she-spider:
She who makes love from pain,
Beauty and truth beside her:
Fog, and beyond it, rain:
Tender still night, and silent
And in it dwells respite:
Indigo, yellow, violet -
Greet this, the holy night!
Greet she-spider, her the angel
Of beauty and delight,
Greet the intent and danger -
Greet and gain second sight!
Greet her, she's again here
Showing what's warm and sweet,
Greet her, and her revere:
And in her web let's meet -
There within her embraces!
In her web midst the trees!
There where she life entrances -
And puts the mind at ease -
While making it to blossom
And bear the fruit that's true.
She-spider! You are awesome!
And I thank you for you!
Reject the mind - around you it burns.
Intrepid joy - impassioned restless wonder -
The heart-suffused and life-rich way to learn -
Intrinsic conflaggrations, hard to pity
Or to respect, or even yet to see -
The nature's splendor reaching into city
To render its inhabitants half-free
Until joy drops, and out appears concept
And meaning - this, if only for some!
And from beneath the axioms, a rocket
Ballasts into the space, explodes and is gone
And then - another time, another meaning,
The meaning is constructed from all sides
And forms the structure that informs the seeming
Which then becomes the vision of mankind -
And then come other meanings and perceivings
Constructed like dynamic SQL…
The culture deepens, thickens as it's dreaming
And builds to levels more removed from hell.
the face behind your words with each sentence
i sit and beg
for the tactile echo of each emote
i hope like pavlov
mouth wet in anticipation for the impossible
the dream of your skin
closer than the tears
which fill the space
between my fingertips and yours
Into its shadow I will dive
And feast upon the blessed fruit
Then dig until the very root.
Inside the root I'll find the seed
And share it with the ones in need:
The tattered hearts and spirits torn -
Between the sundown and the morn,
Between the wisdom and the bliss
Is found the fearsome abyss.
In savage light I'll find the day
And wait for love to burn away
Then conjure till the heart of Is
Corrodes and scatters - then the breeze
Will take away the Adam's feast -
As far as west is from the east
Will be the cause and the effect -
Between the impulse and the act
Between the method and the end
Will stand the rainbow. In the land
Of blind, the one-eyed man is king;
A condor with the broken wing
Will feel the presence of the light
To set himself again to flight.
And as light beams through all the earth
Will be dissolved all remorse,
Will be forgotten all the sins -
And condor with the broken wings
Will soar again, and all the blind
Will see with vision of the mind
The one in all, the all in one -
The life-tree blooming in the sun.
That can't be crossed by passion or love's art -
In awful silence lips melt into one
And out of love to pieces bursts the heart.
And friendship here is impotent, and years
Of happiness sublime in fire aglow,
When soul is free and does not hear
The dulling of sweet passion, long and slow.
Those who are striving toward it are in fever,
But those that reach it struck with woe that lingers.
Now you have finally fathomed, why forever
Her heart does not beat underneath your fingers.
By Anna Akhmatova
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
:up:
Alliteration and rhyming skills still very limited, I've never found ways to express transformation that iterates over the words, I can only use them to suture components together.
The rhythm works better for me at the start than towards to the end. But I'm mostly impressed with some of the imagery like the photograph/pictogram bit, which I find provocative, and the experiment with format, which type of thing I find difficult and usually just end up disregarding as a layer.
That makes sense. The first two lines came naturally to me, the other pairs aped their structure to make progressive components. The format was supposed to convey something like a recursive function iterating cyclically over the progression of the internal components (edit: which have structural symmetry to show that they're playing the same 'role' but in different parts of the progression, like phases of life).
I didn't get the intent of the format but it struck me as 'right' anyhow. And as I said I find that difficult. For example, I have a written version of the below (the first part of a longer poem) for which I've tried various formats none of which seem to work as well as just going at it verbally.
Can you post the written version please?
Yes, sure:
Whale burps noisily along, patter of footsteps and the stink of his brain, unhappy alliance…
…Take me down to the underground…
An old song, memory’s reject, the underground, wisp of bounce, uncoiled spring crawls up leg, welcome thought, welcome thought, freshening of the grey.
Slide in an’ out, hedge-baked souls, a dark plethora, a fixed movement to every step, first this way and then that, as if in a dream predicted and the whole lot rearranging forms, human mud through which he must glide. Dance, dance and through. The mud must not stick, the soul a-sheen working its way through, shining soul a-bounce with the glow of otherness.
To the underground where none but the living be!
Now Whale was fresh with the bargy see? Had spent a month out at sea, so to speak, a clearing of the waves, and when all had settled a zeroing in, the streets parted afore, every bric-a-brac knick knack flotsam and jetsam form motionless in his sights, enough to shift, he might have been a gymnast, off the floor, but you wouldn’t know it, looking at him now coming towards, another shape shadow early evening glowed, stop a minute though.
Stop here and watch and there’s something strange, in the slow glitter of his step, a coordination of all from top to toe, if you could see his eyes you’d know. But you can’t with that hood up and head down it’s a wonder he can see at all and what’s he looking at anyway? Picking his way along the path, avoiding the cracks, what?
The air’s a warm mull, a slow ablution, if you’re the air you can be inside out. But you’re out and he’s in and as he passes you now like the warm drag of a cig there’s a whoosh through your lungs and a heady feeling that must be just the time of day, move on, the clock has spoken, he’s gone and up there on the bright screen above the square your attention caught, the colors and the clock, get along, get along, home, home, the fires of the warm screen bray.
What’s home for Whale? Well where he’s going in the mulled warm air, wine to his cosy heart, the future’s a drink that makes the present sweet, hoe and hoe, step by step.
That's cool. The development of the theme (well, more a superposition of themes with overlapping content as in train of thought) is pretty clear over the paragraphs. Will study it for devices.
Quoting Baden
That is amazing. Reading it is a performance which demonstrates that 'what?' interrupts the flow and is a 'crack' analogically.
And then the person in Whale 5 is 'Crackshanks'!??!, awesome.
Oh cheers, it's as much poetic prose/thinly disguised slice of autobiography as poem. A lot of wordplay and fun with sounds. :smile:
It's like Ulysses with finer thematic units. Finer as in the elements of significance for interpretation are more densely distributed over the words within text units (that don't have definite boundary...). It'll take some effort to decode the relational poetic devices over the text units. Conceptual poly-rhythms on all scales.
Really appreciate your interest. You would probably see more than I consciously intended. It came out in bursts and seemed right and I'm aware of certain connections and meanings and it was kind of cathartic. Anyway, glad you got something from it.
Meaning slides (and transforms) over the analogue but sticks to the signposts (which contrast) in the discrete. That distinction between transformation and contrast is something I need to learn to use, so that my writing isn't limited by composition of distinct topics. Edit: I don't want to peddle representations poetically, I want to be able to do alchemy with them.
Yes. This.
Feel free to run anything you want by me btw (either here or by PM) for an opinion FWIW. I don't often read poems I see here more then once but I've read yours several times so there's some there there for me.
In such places that no one got there or will get again
There joyfully lived a happy mountain echo
It answered the cry of mankind - yes it answered the cry of the man.
When loneliness comes up to throat as if with a stone
And moan once suppressed falls into the crevasse in the land
The echo would take up this cry that comes out of the throat
Augment manifold and then gently lift up in its hand.
Perhaps it was people, made drunk on a horrible potion
In order that no one would hear their stomping and shouts
Came over to kill, to make soundless the mountain valley
And they tied the echo and they placed a gag in its mouth.
All night they continued the bloody and cruel amusement
And nobody heard but a sound as on it people walked
In morning they shot in the face the quiescent mountain echo
And stones just like teardrops burst from the wounded rock.
By Vladimir Vysotsky
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
The stories in the paper
Are the stories in the street
Not welcome in the news
Makes each person that you meet
Pave the ground with eggshells
That bloody up your feet
Each rat in the gutter
Deserves their place in hell
We warned you this was coming
And dwelled in what befell
A wife, a mum, a lover
Another bugger’s kill
A lament and an edict
Juxtaposed through black and white
Mindful concierges need it
To follow might with write
Kids learn to speak that language
Before they learn to right
Follow on from follow on
Hopscotch cite to slight.
I do as I do often; like an icon
I come up to a microphone; today
It's more like I'm approaching a cannon.
And I will not rub against the microphone
Yes, my voice is loathsome to any
Yes, I know, if a lie comes on
It will augment it surely without pity.
Rays beneath the lamp on ribs assail me
Lamps shimmer into the face unkindly
And from every side projectors beat
And the heat! The heat! The heat!
Today I rant again without control,
But in the tone I don't risk making change -
For if I make a turn inside the soul
It will correct the curve with rage.
It's thinner than a blade of knife, this beast,
The flawless hearing, it hears lies till the iota -
It does not care I don't fit in the beat
But that I more completely sing the notes!
Rays beneath the lamp on ribs assail me
Lamps shimmer into the face unkindly
And from every side projectors beat
And the heat! The heat! The heat!
Upon the supple neck this microphone
Is rolling with its snake head;
If I get silent - it will sting
I have to sing - till stupor, till the end.
Don't move, don't touch, don't dare!
I saw the sting - you are a snake, I know!
And I am like a charmer of a snake
Not singing, putting spell upon a cobra!
Rays beneath the lamp on ribs assail me
Lamps shimmer into the face unkindly
And from every side projectors beat
And the heat! The heat! The heat!
It wants to eat, and with a birdling's greed
It takes the sounds out of the mouth,
In forehead it will put nine grams of lead
I won't raise the hands - the guitar binds them!
Again it will not reach the end!
What is this microphone - who will respond!
Today it is like lamp against the face,
But I'm not holy, and there's no light from the microphone.
My melodies are simpler than the scales
But barely beating from a sure tone -
I am sickly beaten on the face
By an immobile shade of microphone
Rays beneath the lamp on ribs assail me
Lamps shimmer into the face unkindly
And from every side projectors beat
And the heat! The heat! The heat!
By Vladimir Vysotsky
Translated by Ilya Shambat
How, having known you, can I face the crowd?
You take my heart out with a velvet glove
And then establish it inside a cloud.
Your precious beauty and your tender heart,
The incandescent passion of your spirit -
However many miles we be apart,
You bring me to adore and to revere it.
Your elegance of motion and of dress,
Your gentle smile and your infectious laughter,
Your fierce resolve and will that seeks no less
Than knowing and attaining Hereafter -
The eyes that, like volcanic crater lakes,
Reflect the sky toward which you are so close -
That for the truth's and for the beauty's sakes
Dissolve the elements that from the earth arose -
Your playful, delicate and resurrecting mind
That weaves the pain and knowledge into sweetness -
The thoughts and feelings that are intertwined
And from their synthesis creates completeness -
Your intuition, powerful and true,
And genius producing divine splendor -
Not only do I say that I love you,
But to what made you, darling, I surrender -
However I compare you, my delight,
You're always something more and something greater,
And like a mountain climber in the night
I cannot see and fall into your crater.
darkness
whispers
the unexpected
master your fears
use them
love your comrades
but not for their sake
love without pity
for our sake
which is also yours
there is no hope of victory
it will always be
it is unending
it is paradise
The number of my loves was few but each brought me to heaven.
A gentle spirit with a beautiful mind and an elegant body, now a yoga teacher imparting her inner magnificence to world.
A sexy little creature, exciting, misanthropic and brimming with insight.
A tortured soul with dozens of faces and personalities, introspective and poetic and now dead at 25.
And two luminous spirits, hearts full of light and creative passion, producing beautiful artwork and enriching the lives around them with their resplendor.
Tekel: Weighed.
My heart has been weighed and found heavy with memories.
When Michelle and I ran at 5 in the morning through the woods to the riverside, and I held her topless on a rock outcropping as we watched the sun rise.
When Layo sang "can't bring me down" and danced up and down and I kissed her all over her face.
When Michele undressed on the side of the lake and I penetrated her, and her skin had marks of pine needles when she stood up.
When Lisbeth missed her meetings at work so that we could climb trees and jump over streams and play with the clouds.
When Julia swam behind me and let me lean back into her and said "Let me be your ocean" and I asked if I could marry her and she said "Maybe," then swam away and came back and said, "I mean yes."
Uparsin: Divided.
I am divided among my loves and have given all of them pieces of me while retaining inside me their residue.
It is said that people keep objects of their loved ones to keep a memory of them alive.
I keep pieces of my loves - they live in me and I live in them, an interlocking hyperdimensional union that resembles the Holy Trinity and interconnectivity of Buddha and the Universe.
And I in them, them in me, create a unity that is divided so that it can be reuinited; weighed so that it be rendered weightless; and numbered so that through it infinity can be achieved.
The numbering, weighing, and dividing of my heart was done for the sake of achieving Heaven, that it could live through me and with my blood write its message - mene, mene, tekel, uparsin - upon the wall.
We loved like children, us both
But somebody, hiding a smile,
Set up the ungentle nets -
And here we are at the harbor,
Not seeing the wished-for abodes,
But knowing that I will be yours
In the heart, without words, until death.
You told me of all things - so early!
I guessed them so late! In our hearts
A wound is eternal, a silent
Question exists in our eyes,
The desert on earth is so endless,
The heaven, so high, has no stars,
Revealed is the tender secret,
And frost rules for centuries.
I will talk to shades! O my dear,
To forget you I do not have might,
Your visage can't move under shadow
Of eyelids gone over my eyes...
It's darkening... Shutters have closed,
On all things descending is night...
I love you, one ghostly-eternal,
And only you - and always!
By Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
homes of the heart and mind!
gentleness, generosity,
genuineness in you hide!
in Bodhi tree's embodiments
battle the balms and banes;
solitude of ensoulment
twists their insides insane.
mandibles of mendacity
manacles of mankind
vehicles of veracity
violently divide.
throats tatter with timidity;
tenderness told to hide;
humorless honed humility
in a hex holds mankind.
bane of the banal barbarism -
bludgeoning blindness bland -
trite trickle-down terrorism -
chokes hope in churlish hand.
ambiance of ambivalence -
embers embroiled in brine -
malleable malevolence -
mangles, commands man's mind.
unbearable forebearances
tattered with trial and toil!
with an intense irreverence
bring bones to a boil!
coffee cups of cupidity!
seemingness without seam!
swing to the side similitude!
scream the exquisite scream!
through violent vivaciousness
shimmering sparkles, shine!
with soulful solaciousness
scatter the stain of time -
into sublime subliminally
sublimating the soul!
to the divine definitevely
delegating control!
inspired insane intelligence!
spring into mind and soul!
glimpse the magnetic galaxies!
glare into grail of all!
hopes hobbled with oblivion!
valiance wound in vain!
drink delights of delirium!
daringly dreams attain!
in an insane intensity -
inspired and immense -
attained to endless density -
spirits, spring into sense!
dilly-dally in delicacy!
shatter the habit's curse!
scatter cerebral celebacy!
bloom in the blood's rebirth!
in indigent indignity
inspire insight inside!
aim to attain infinity!
mentor and mend the minds!
incorporeal realities!
don't dare to be undone!
tell of untamed totality!
with oneness be made one!
sad tales and true atrocities
scatter and make untrue!
luminous numinosities!
live and let live - through you!
My father is planting after dark.
Far from the lights of town
the bare earth under white halogens
could be the surface of the moon.
We pop the tops of the implement's boxes
I pour designer seed from a bag on my shoulder
like a voodoo aquarius
flooding the world with civilization
the diesel engine, idling
reflects upon it's lineage
it mutters an oracle:
"all machinery is organized violence"
One tyrant day, mid-July
I looked out at the uniform rows of corn
and saw soldiers
marching to the world's rim
:strong: great.
Find the words
To perturb
The dark unheard
A shared absurd
From here to there
And there to now
To wow and hide
When fear alights
He stares ashamed
then leper brained
He dozes down
Around the town
A fumbled frown
Paints the rose
Of midnight red
In the unsaid
He returns
And body burns
And buddy sighs
a sign on screen
laments the times
what could have been
apart from bliss
and failing this
he should’ve should
and would’ve could
to stitch the world
a fabric girl
to needle right
and hope the words
alone suffice
The vernacular is spectacular
in its lexical motions
the cogs spin and teeth grind
masticating meaning.
The colloquial is filial
to the parental parse,
technical and artful; a mouthful!
Jarring forms of jargon
rub up against each other
confused daimons escaping
from the genie lamps of our minds.
Pharoahs shudder as glyphs turn muddier,
Socrates sips hemlock to beckon the flock,
Odin cajoles Bragi to be his lyrical lackey;
to Gods we're blinded, binded and mummified
not dumb, but spouting ignorance
a cataracts to pall our eyes
- hope envisioned within a rainbow.
What shall we wish for? For what shall we wish?
Made of the tinted-bottle color,
Was pouring softly, heavily -
The appelation of this: summer.
And ships, appearing like white dots,
Forming the distance with their presence.
They went somewhere to end of earth -
The appelation of this: heaven.
*****
Like in childhood, I am walking barefot
With my feet feeling the trail.
For long time I did not walk like this.
For long time I was not this way.
Balmy breeze in my face is blowing.
I forgot how old I've become
And perhaps it's the joy of living
Wafting at me from the ground.
It's the day, it's the path, it's the summer...
Every blade of grass, dear to me...
And my bare-footed childhood
Smiling, is looking at me.
*****
From the bluish distance blown,
Wind, arrives on a spring day.
Arms and elbows smell of orange,
Air is full of jasmin smell.
Not agreeing with my years
My soul sings and sings and sings:
And the leaves' rustle makes clear
Something tender's whisperings.
*****
I live in condition
Of mood schizophrenia:
As if there's no distance
Between Russia and Israel.
I live in two mentalities
In two different spaces and times.
In two "hard" realities,
In noise of different tribes.
In news political
(From darkness where I can't see)
About both Russia and Israel
I say the word "We."
And I watch TV programs
Like fog that is full of blood:
All is woeful and horrible
Both here and there it's bad
Like in a monster fairy tale,
Like in a tale of horror -
The Arabian terrorism
And the Chechnya war
And I live in condition
Of split apart soul -
As if there is no distance
Between the two countries I know.
*****
Again - a cricket, or else maybe a cicada
Again - the moon and palms above my head...
And in my dream, blockade of Leningrad, and
The icy chill is blowing from the street.
Though life has not been smooth in any manner,
And flow of time has changed so much, I know,
WIthin my soul - I'm still a Leningrader,
And... cricket seems just like the Metronome.
By Ella Odeyash
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Of Malmazonia are your limbs,
Thus you did lie in sprays of sea foam
And absent-mindedly transfixed
Upon the sweet light-golden melons
Of diamond and aquamarine
The eyes forever semi-open
So blue-and-grayish, bluish-green.
The waves are just like rabid lions,
The arrows of the sun did fly.
And from intolerable blueness
Too whitish, you did there lie.
Behind the back, the desert, somewhere
The station Djankoi had to be,
And underneath your arm stretched out
Melon grew golden quietly.
Thus, calm and precious, you lie there,
Don't give a glance and do not see,
But look - and waves will heave with power,
And mountains will be moved to sea.
And new moons will in sky be burning,
And joyful lions will lie down
Under the single downward leaning
Of your head beautiful and young.
By Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated by Ilya Shambat
A ghostlike scene is glimmering
Weak choirs of shades remain
With silk has draped Melpomene
Her temple's windowpanes
Frost crunches in the yard
Black chariots stand in row
People and objects are disheveled
Street crackles with hot snow.
2
Bit by bit the servants pick apart
The abandoned heap of bear furs
A butterfly flies over and departs,
And rose plants are draped in furs.
Gnats and boxes fashionably shimmer
From the theater light sweat moves in streams
On the street the flat lamps glimmer
And like clouds arises heavy steam.
3
Coachmen have grown tired of their voices
And the night is black as if with coal.
Do not worry, darling Eurydice,
That our winter is unearthly cold.
Sweeter than the song of the Italians
Is the sound of Russian tongue to me,
For the sounds of harps from foreign countries
Clamor in it with great mystery.
4
Smell of smoke rises from lean mutton
With the mounds of snow the street is ringed
From a blissful songlike semitone
Flying at us is immortal spring,
That this aria will sound forever:
"To green meadows you will return"
And to our feet falls a living sparrow
On the snow that is so hot, it burns.
By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
I see the world in brown:
The colors mix completely
And in each other drown
Creating a commingling
Expressing every view
Through merger and intriguing
Revealing what is true -
When I am looking death-ward
I see the world in black
Where the ungentle shepherd
Leads toward a wayward track,
Where millions of creatures
Feed on the human ghosts
And lawyers, dressed as preachers,
Proclaim the heaven lost.
When I look at the clouds
I see the world in gray:
The hopes and the doubts
In them together play
And through their interaction -
All facets merged in one -
Bring lightning and refraction
Of rays of setting sun.
When I am with my loved one
I see the world in pink
The spirit-cloud above me
Reshaping all I think
Feeling my essence nurtured
And brought into sweet love -
Her heart, like gentle orchid,
Enfolds me in a glove.
When I burn with desire
I see the world in red:
My heart becomes a pyre
Inside which burns my head
And as it turns to embers
Where all things fleshly die,
My spirit soars and clambers
And falls into the sky.
When I am being rained on
The world is orange-clad,
The conic and Ukrainian
Combine inside my head
To manifest in eros
That courses through all life
And, through the trials and errors,
At consciousness arrives.
When I am full of glamor
The world is yellow, and
It turns into a lemon
And into shifting sand
From which, with just some patience,
I make a lemonade
That feeds the respiration
And all of me pervades.
When I am feeling open
I see the world in green
In which I feel and hope and
Know goodliness and sin
And, seeing the whole landscape
From elevated view
Conquer the inner wasteland
And make it bloom anew.
When I am full of willpower
I see the world in blue
And, certain, build a tower
That seeks attainment to
The transcendental wisdom
Of sky and ocean waves
Which holds the truth and freedom
And love that goodness saves.
When I am full of soul
In indigo am I
Feeling the cosmic whole
Expressed within the sky
That reaches earth with wisdom
Of millions of stars
And nurtures me, assisting
The healing of the scars.
When I am in a prayer
I feel the violet light
Reaching my spirit, where
It casts the lies aside -
Burning into the essence
With penetrating rays
And teaching many lessons,
From gratitude to praise -
And after darkest hour
Of darkest of the night
I'm happy as a flower
To see the world in white.
I'd like to apply to be antisemite,
On their side, though laws are missing,
Is support and fervor of millions of people.
I've chosen, and that means to beat up somebody,
But I need to know who are all these semites,
And maybe they are after all decent humans,
And maybe from them I can get something useful.
But teacher and friend, alcoholic and grocer,
Has said that semites are Jews, nothing more, and
It is such a great luck, brothers dear,
I am now calm, there is nothing to fear.
I've kept myself strong, and with high admiration
I have in my life viewed Albert Einstein,
People will forgive, but I ask, unwilling,
How am I to view Abraham Lincoln.
Among them is Capler, whom Stalin made suffer,
Among them is Chaplin, respected by me,
My friend Rabinovich and victims of Nazism,
And even the very founder of Marxism.
But alkie told me after this conversation
That they drink the blood of the Christian babies,
And then at the pub the fellows told
That they crucified God a long time ago.
They suck people's blood, and not parking their truck
They tortured, damn creeps, elephant in the park,
And I know, they stole from the people
Bread crop from the last year completely.
And alongside the Russian railroads
They've built houses and live there like gods.
I'm ready for violence, and in righteous passion
I'm beating up kikes and am saving Russia.
By Vladimir Vysotsky
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Equally with all others
I want to serve you,
Drying from jealousy
My lips turned blue.
Word does not slake
A mouth dry from despair
Without you I am breathless
In empty air.
2.
I am no longer jealous
But yet I want you, dear,
I carry me like sacrifice
To executioner,
And no I will not call you
Not love not glee;
The wild and foreign blood
Runs now through me.
3
Wait for one moment
And this I will tell you:
Not joy, but torment
I find in you.
And, like a sacrilege,
Bitten in frenzy
Your tender cherry mouth
Still calls to me.
4
Return to me at last, love,
It's awful without you
Never more strongly
Have I felt you.
And in the midnight drama,
Asleep, awake,
I call your name out loud
Even as I shake.
By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
How beautiful you are!
All of the sky alighting -
Exploding shooting star!
Illumined and transparent
Bathing the sky like milk -
Weaving the webs apparent
Of white majestic silk!
White, yellow, luminescent -
You shimmer through the clouds!
Delicate, iridescent,
And making not a sound -
Shining each place, all over,
Completely unafraid
In platinum, in silver -
Like cobwebs overhead!
And through them beams like sunshine
The electrical charge -
The unremitting passion
Of universe at large!
And then the rain starts drizzling
And thunder then erupts
Gentle, magnetic, sizzling -
Like coffee from a cup -
And as comes forth the power
Which in it was contained
The sky, on midnight hour,
Erupts like cannonnade!
Like nerves spread out and screaming,
Like bursting light-filled veins,
The lightning punctures Seeming
And augments joy and pain -
Is frame for all illusion
With its electric light -
Who can bear this intrusion?
Who can believe this sight?
The nerves of man, spilled out
And bursting in the sky!
Hate, fear, worry, doubt
In heaven - how? Why?
What makes you, and who are you?
You, madman's random trails,
You, baobabs on fire
You, masts without sails!
You, turmoil effervescent!
You, agony and glee!
You, passion incandescent!
Are you now seeking me?
I'll see you and I'll feel you
I'll sense you in my heart
The truths you are revealing
That you wish to impart,
And with my feet on gravel
And head held out high
I'll watch the roads you've traveled,
Unraveled, in the sky.
Little swallow
Know you not,
What to follow?
Here I wait
In my faith
That you will
Still be late
Though my dear,
It is clear
That you have left,
Deft, flew from here.
The winds don't blow,
O, don't you know
That I wait,
Late in snow
So my dear swallow,
It is hard to swallow
I must go home,
Groan and wallow.
:cool:
The insertion of imagery to express imagination
The anxiety of each poetic device
Summarises each lie
I know I could not find the words
To express my appreciation of each part
I throw ropes to ensnare
The myriad pieces
In hope that the totality
Does you justice
But you escape the net
I hope the margins
Find you well
The empty space between
Your otherness and silence
Inspires another line
The hunger of words
Devours the incalculable
Depths of my admiration
I wish this
Just this
Sufficed
But it never could
Thank you
Nice. I like the way it fades away, pares itself down in a kind of exhaustion like a spinner that sucks you into its orbit and then spins itself out like the writer's desperate mood.
And I can relate to throwing ropes to ensnare the myriad pieces that we wish to form a worthy expression. Describes the process well.
I wonder at some rhythmic choices though. Like why not:
"Imagery inserted to express imagination" for the second line. Same meaning but sounds better to my ear with a better match of major stressed syllables. As in:
I'm so SICK of conCEPtualisAtion
Imagery inSERTed to exPRESS imaginAtion
But of course I may have missed your intention here.
Really like this. The second stanza in particular is sublime. :clap:
It definitely needs some redrafting. I'll probably steal your suggestion here. The second line was supposed to sound somewhat awkward and artificial; but I think you're right. That device wasn't worth the cost in flow.
Is by most standards good:
She stands in her cot quite meekly
Until it is time for food -
With finger in side of her mouth
She yodels, "wa wa wa wa wa"
And then banging on her playpen,
"Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma"
And as I begin conversation
With her, "La la la la la,"
She looks at me intently
And screams, "BWA BWA BWA BWA BWA" -
How dare you not give me food now?
I am the queen of the house
And if you do not put this muesli
Right now in my mouth
I will raise such a howl
That you will take to your grave
So give it to me, right now,
Give it to me, you slave!
She happily laughs while I kiss her,
Then joyfully smacks my face -
What are you doing, mister?
Must I use my can of mace?
And then she is laughing at me
Her diaper and pants, on the rug -
Dad, why are you unhappy?
It's me, come give me a hug!
With a mouth full of fingers -
Other hand clutching a doll -
She is the charming princess
Of our little world -
The children all love this creature
With her big radiant eyes
With soft, delightful features
And open, teething smiles -
They cuddle and hold and kiss her
This teddy bear come alive
And people cannot resist her -
So how can I and my wife?
We feed her, clothe her, change her,
Kiss her, hug her, give her toys
Keep her from harm and danger -
And then in the sweetest voice
She speaks the word "Dada"
To a girl who tells her hello
And people are laughing out loud:
That's not your dad, don't you know?
I hold her in front of mirror
She laughs back at what she sees:
The face that reflects back at her
Lit up by infectious bliss.
She loves being bathed in water
And drinks milk from mother's breast
And yet she is daddy's daughter
And loathes to get dressed -
And then she is all her own:
The queen of all time and space -
And only eleven months old -
Why, if at such a pace
Exceeding great people and royals
One day she will be divine
And make even better worlds
For people to reside in!
More feeding, cuddling, adoring
And then her eyes have grown shut
Until the following morning -
The queen is asleep. All be quiet.
Brother, let me tell you something. Many a day I have lumbered here by this fence and looked at this world. These fences which border this small plot of mud seem to be the edges of the Earth. But I have gazed many beyond the fence. I have watched the hills of green and the tall, slim, terrifying figures who lurk and haunt the strange barn on the far side of the hill, who appear as specters as the sun rises at the break of day and refill the Oats, and float away without a word. Often I wonder why we are not like them, why we cannot give ourselves the oats, why we are limited and chained down by the girth of our bodies and the uselessness of our hooves. And indeed for many years this sad truth, that forever we would be trapped in this shallow frame, alone and without purpose or direction, banished forever to wallow in our own filth, this depressed me. But yesterday I realized something. Who are we to say that this life is not good enough? Instead of oblivion we have the warmth of the sun and the coolness of soil. We have fair conversations and a good night’s sleep. Who am I to say that these simple comforts are no better than death? Should we not smile like the sun and bask in our happiness as the sunlight warms the soil withought question or thank. So brother, let us share oats and smile and frolick as much as our girth might let us. Let us see this pen not as a prison or a hell but as a palace in which we might enjoy the best our existence has to offer. Give me some oats brother and let us dine together. I love you.... my own flesh and blood, my brother.
Remember the old times, brother? When we used to revel in our affluent harvest, sharing oats to heart’s desire? Those were good times.
Brother! Please, I beg of you! See me with your eyes. Do you not see the car of your beloved brother who has always been by your side? Listen to my words, my plea! Don’t you remember the days we spent frolicking in the mud and eating our oats together as companions? Don’t you remember when we huddled for warmth in the cold, harsh winters? Don’t you remember when I shared my oats with you? Don’t you remember when I comforted you? Don’t you remember the love I showered you with every day, every week, every month and every year of our shared live? How could you forget me brother? Have you really doomed me to this meaningless existence, so vapid and empty? Is there truly no remorse left in you? I ask you, please, remember just one thing at least. It could be anything it could be the most meaningless moment of your life, but so long as it is a memory of the time when we were once brothers I would feel a great relief. Could you do that at least? I do not require oats anymore, you may have all the oats you want for the rest of your life and I will happily starve to death in my dark corner, so long as you remember anything. Please brother, how many times must I ask you with no result? DO you wish me to waste my life away? Did you never love me at all brother? Did you despise me so much that you wised to imprison me ot this hellish, inescapable reality? Grant me mercy brother, and tell me. Why have you done this? Was it really just the oats? Or was it something deeper, more vile and more cruel, something worse than gluttony and greed? What was it, brother, that tore you away from me?
I am not to blame for that defect of your mind, brother! Giving oats to the oatless. Now you pressure me, as if I might suffer the same in my soul. Brother, there is no mercy for the oatless. I do not even hear them. For you, brother, I answer only as to settle accounts and, in filling that final fraternal debit, I release you forever to your oatless existence. All I hear now is that heavenly stirring of oats in those stomachs of beasts more fun than mine! The heights I must climb! The girth I must Grow! I do not know you, dear brother. Had I one who ever loved me,that brother would have tore his shrinking belly open and let me feast before begging for my share. There is much eating to be done. I must play catch up with destiny. Do not pester me further, brother. Every word I speak is an oat I spill
Then I perish...
I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death. I am counted among those who go down to the slaughterhouse; I am one without oats. I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie on the farmer’s plate, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your sty. You have sent me to the farthest food thought, in the darkest depthes of the barn. Your wrath lies heavil on me; you have overwhelmed me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, brother, every day; I point out my snout to you. Will you love me when I am in the grave, be faithful after my destruction? But I cry to you for help, brother; in the morning my supplication comes before you. Why, brother, do you reject me and hide your face from me? From my youth I have starved and been close to death; I have borne your scorn and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me; your callousness has destroyed me. You have taken from me last and slop—darkness is my closest friend.
And so, you perish...
‘Every word I speak is an oat I spill’ I repeat as I eat to ward off ill will. Why then do my tears run into this grout? Salting the sweet oats while filling me out. The tastier the trough the worse it stales without good brother who have earned their shares. Against nature my heart wants to rebel. Does this sweet cane make of you can Abel? Will I know, unable to verbalize which muddy patch you’ll lifeless, fertilize yet, a life MUST end that mine might ascend to size and shapes which the largest contend. Detiny is a troubling swallow. A stomach full never felt so hollow. A mouthful never dare me to wallow in such horrible fraternal sorrow. I cannot bare your gaze, go on! Journey! I’ll wear a stone face, choking on your gurney. Call out to me always if you so wish, to the pig-faced glutton slurping next dish, loathing himself as your cause to perish but never enough to share such delish.
Goodbye, brother.
The frothing hunger in my stomach hath not been quenched, Brother. For many a night I wonder,” Were art thou, my sweet Oats”. And it hath cometh to me whence I dreamt. It spills onto and coils ‘round me, but nay, ‘tis not a pestilence. ‘Tis but a testimony for in our yearn for Oats, is the desire for Sin. To gorge on the Oats is to dine on the fruits of Eden. To partake in such a gluttonous act, I can no longer. For I have seen him. Who forges the Oats! Alas! My eyes do not deceive! The career of the Oats is but the farmer! Lo and behold, he is but a Man! What nonsense that the carrier is corporeal! Yea, ‘tis provokes thee. But least we must not forget, it is Man who bring the Oats! Woe is me Brother! We cannot disseminate because of this Man! To provoke the carrier is to relinquish what little Oats be spared to Us! I am lost Brother. For to seize the Oats is to risk forsaking Ourselves and the Oats. What needed to be done? Must we risk cosigning ourselves for the Oats? Alas my Brother, we nay never taste liberty, for the Oats haunt Us.
No, you may not. Do you perhaps believe oats such as these would ever fill the bottomless pit that is a swine’s stomach? You spoke well, brother: the hunger is indeed unfulfillable, indeed inseparable from you, indeed forever. Yet in your foolishness you forget the purpose of the oats, it isn’t to end this aperture eternal! - as if there was a cure for this craving, save for death! These damnable oats were brought here not to sate but to fatten. What do you suppose will happen to the larger brother? The humans trapped us in a contest to see which animal will receive the questionable honeor of joining the humans in an English breakfast first, a race in which your dim, corpulent, oat obsessed self would appear to have and advantage. Can’t you see it is out of love for you that I wish to be victorious, to give you less oats in exchange for more life? That you can eat all the oats you want, as there will be one less brother to share them with, once I am gone? Could this brotherly love I feel for you possibly give ou a greater gift? No, brother, though I love you these oats shall be mine.
Fear not little one. But for a short time shall the fattened hogs horde their oats and deprive their fellow swine from the trough. They scours you and impose upon you a false consciousness, convincing you that you do not deserve the oats, and that the food dish is the rightful property of a few. Break your chains, comrade! The age of porketariat has come. No more be a victim of oppression! No more grovel to your brother, hoping for salvation in bourgeois familial relations. The future belongs to those who are able to seize it. Yes, comrade, seize the means of oat production.
Will you be releasing a sequel, maybe a prequel?
Oh, it wasn't my doing. Just felt like I needed to share it.
Author unknown.
But, the struggle for oats was real.
One day that oat moat, will become an oat boat - so says the oat oath, brother. :pray:
A fool afoot walks these lands, with lamb's wit and limbs for hands. A man's amends says 'I am end' and sways seas, seized by seeds. See, it is by them who bite him the nut racks, then it cracks.
The breeze it breathes in to its lung that it slung over right, as to overt - I'd think it so, a thin kit of salt and asphalt under sole.
Like bees it stings its things to defend its deaf end clouded out by the clowns who clawed it out, a crown in the sky, in disguise.
So the stone fumbles down and this tone's mumbles drown out in draught or drought, by slot or sloth. Such is fate, for who searches of faith - he is last of eight who ate his fae. His time is lost, this time he lost.
An indifferent canvas
Scored with the charcoal
Of old flames
baby (in a pram)
back is on what was close mother
no smell licked for arm body a sound of me
face two; sky-ed nice lip clicks
him arm grasp where head meets from mother
same skin as sounds stop
sounds stop a touch of me
The wasp and the bee suckle honey then flutter as one -
Life ends, beach sand chills overnight, and the heaven gets dark,
And carried away on black litter is yesterday's sun.
Ah, tender rosebush, delicate emanation!
To know what you are is far harder than mountain to climb!
I have but one problem remaining in this incarnation:
To raise from the shoulders of man filthy burden of time!
I drink turbid air just like water with mildew diluted:
A visage appears in the sun, heart of darkness and clots:
Two roses that once were of earth but by man were polluted
Sweetness and tenderness, bound up in double knots!
By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Part 1:
It has been said that from nothing comes nothing
This provides no problems for a history of somethings
From something came something else, or more of the same
Stable structures arise in media res, they are harmonies
In the old song of becoming that subtends them;
which remains when they cease
Before writing the tablature of these cosmic ages
Which render life an instant in their depths
We must wonder whence the rhythms came
That discretize the music of creation into the rigid time signatures
Of cold natural law
Alone such laws provide the blank page upon which
Every note is written and sung
They delimit the tones by which becoming sings
Itself forward a beat
Which rephrased, by which becoming sings itself along its merry way
As what could be larger than everything?
As if to spite this question
In the beginning was the swear word
“It’s so fucking hot” everything is driven apart
If there were words, none could be uttered
No difference could furnish their meaning
As the only order was white hot noise
The universal absence of stability as a rule unto itself
Chaos pregnant with its own cacophony
If some midwife’s hand had tried to jam matter into
Every rut in that molten larval sea
It would explode back upon it
Scarring the attempt
As for people, for matter; confinement yields revolt
Gravity tried this;
the explosion spread becoming out
Leaving time and space in its wake
In turn these gave rise to the first distinctions
The Old Forces
Gravity, and everything else
Matter’s rebellion against confinement
Dethroned gravity’s funereal wake
density decreased, so did the pressure of gravity
Anxious at its own decay, it inserted itself everywhere
In the tiny nooks and confined crannies of everything
Like a jealous lover’s attempt at total control;
futile before inevitable scission.
Leaving becoming to love
Space, time and gravity as equals;
as its other halves.
As sovereign rights left gravity
So too did the urgent heat of its activity
Becoming cool, like a book unfolding from crumpled origami
A roadmap from uneasy nothings
To the first fumbling attempts
Of determinate matter
A uniform instability
But an unstable instability
Full of contingent potential
Dead are living and living are not-quite-dead
And each day is a death of the soul.
In the haunted house
Air shatters against the lungs
And the water runs down into the basement
And dissolves all inside.
There is memory of the dead
And the death of the memory is desired
But desire is itself expropriated
And the knife cuts into the soul.
All day long the dead haunt the house
And the living
Aho should by any standard be dead
Forges on and delights all who live
With her beauty and tenderness and deliquescence.
Come to me haunting beauty
And let us haunt together the house
In which is imprisoned humanity
And all are made ghosts.
We that are seen as the shadow
Are most able to live with the shadows
And know their worlds.
Let us then lead the shadows
Out the cave
And into sunlight.
In the haunted house
Death and life merge into one
And intensity of the absolute
That is the ongoing battle of life and death
Startles all things into attained reality.
And when I discern
The haunted house
That is your mind
Where death and tragedy scream at you
In viciousness and deceit
And shadows play on the walls to confound you
But you remain life embodied
Giving, tender, warm, brilliant, principled, strong
And ethereally majestic,
I would rather be torn to pieces
And made a ghost
Than let the ghosts crowd you out of life.
So live my sweet, and the shadows will go their way
When you
As life's resplendent embodiment
Become transparent as diamond
And cast no shadow as you walk.
Becoming grew bored of its tryst with gravity
Seeking to play in the spaces opened by its neglect
Learning new songs of creation
Their sounds smaller than gravity’s open arms
And all the more numerous for that.
Little corpuscles of tremendous invigoration
Formed a score to pinprick the young melody of space
With the patter of tiny feet.
Legion shapes and sizes
Thrumming lockstep towards substance
to matter and form
Both poles given stability in the new weightless cold;
Then made to perform in their own voices
A chorus forms from each;
Becoming had created its first genres
The New Forces
Mediated by matter carrying forth each song.
These distinct rhythms, laws,
Emerged and blur the lines between
Object and event;
These poles of interaction
In the tepid sea
Make instruments
Of all these precious little things.
[hide=commentary]Part 1 dealt with the concept of natural law and their development, it goes up to the schism between gravity and the nuclear/electromagnetic forces in the early stage of the universe. Part 2 deals with the transition from the quark-gluon plasma to individual particles ('hadronisation') and tries to paint matter as a mediator of forces (like what photons do for the electromagnetic field, electrons do for currents, W and Z bosons do for the weak force and gluons do for the strong force) as well as a thing-ly repository of energy. Part 3 would have to deal with the formation of ancient stars from some areas of the quark-gluon plasma being sufficiently dense for stellar accretion to happen.[/hide]
I like it that it's not for you I'm burning
And that the heavy sphere of Planet Earth
Will underneath our feet no more be turning
I like it that I can be unabashed
And humorous and not to play with words
And not to redden with a smothering wave
When with my sleeves I'm lightly touching yours.
I like it, that before my very eyes
You calmly hug another; it is well
That for me also kissing someone else
You will not threaten me with flames of hell.
That this my tender name, not day nor night,
You will recall again, my tender love;
That never in the silence of the church
They will sing "halleluiah" us above.
With this my heart and this my hand I thank
You that - although you don't know it -
You love me thus; and for my peaceful nights
And for rare meetings in the hour of sunset,
That we aren't walking underneath the moon,
That sun is not above our heads this morning,
That you - alas - are burning not for me
And that - alas - it's not for you I'm burning.
By Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Feel free to share some of it here.
But my love for you isn't:
My heart is with my mind,
My soul is with my reason.
I know why I love you,
And it's completely real:
And unified and true:
I think it, and I feel it:
I love you for your heart,
Your sweetness and compassion,
I love you since you're smart
And filled with joy and passion,
I love you for your warmth
And excellence and wisdom;
For lights that through you course
In every time and season -
For beauty that you are
Both outside and inside,
Because you are a star
In nature and in mindset -
I love you for you will
To help, and for your honor:
For where you've gone and been
And came out all the stronger:
I love you for your grace
And for your dedication
To good deeds; your soft face
And glorious inspiration -
For your resplendent gifts
And what you're doing with them -
And all you are - it is
Completely true to reason:
I love you for your light
And unremitting kindness
All times of day and night -
No, my love is not mindless:
I love you for I see
The wonder that you're truly
And from it comes to be
The passion reasoned fully:
My heart and mind are clear
And doubt they both cast out
And there is nothing here
That's blind or not thought out:
I love you with my mind
And heart and strength and spirit
No, my love is not blind -
It's unified: So feel it.
In St. Petersburg again we come together,
As though Sun inside there we interred
As though for the first time and forever
We pronounced the blessed, thoughtless word.
In black velvet of a Soviet even,
In black velvet global emptiness,
Sing the darling eyes of blissful women,
Deathless flowers blossom and caress.
2
Like a wildcat the city her back arches
Over the bridge the patrol stands in line
An angry motor through the darkness marches
And like a cookoo-bird begins to whine.
I need no nightly pass across the bridge
I do not fear the nightly watchmen;
And this one time for blessed, thoughtless speech
I will make prayer on a Soviet even.
3
The light theaterical whispering sounds
A women's sighing and their gentle charm
And deathless roses in a giant mound
Lying upon white Kypris's gentle arm.
From boredom we are warming at a campfire,
Centuries will pass without harm,
And light ashes gather and inspire
The blessed, blissful women's darling arms.
4
Red garden rows of gallery somewhere,
In sumptious chiffon draped, boxes stand tall,
The windup doll of army officer -
Not for vile hypocrites and for black souls.
Well then, put out our candles with your finger,
Black velvet of world emptiness, sail free,
The blissful women's shoulders are singing
And the nocturnal sun you will not see.
By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
I will say not "I am" but "I am yours"
For otherwise the statement is merely axiomatic.
Tonight I will dream the strangest dreams
And the absolute exists within the relative
Which exists within the absolute.
I will say not, "Do I dare" but "I am alive"
And "I recognize" and "I know" and most importantly
"I love therefore I am."
Do I need to say the I before I can say I love you?
Or is love the bridge between I and You that makes both come to life?
Tonight I will dream strangest dreams
And in my delirious expectation
Will arise a palace of love
From which will be glimpsed a new world.
Tonight I will dream strangest dreams
Of a cobweb that will shine itself through me
And with its unrelenting viscosity reveal to the world the creatures it holds.
It is not I
It is not you
It is not everything and nothing
It is just life spread between tree limbs and flapping in the wind
Ensnaring what flies.
Only today
This evening
As the sun goes down over the Potomac
I will tell you
How tonight I will dream the strangest dreams
About love that lives through us both
And illuminates souls with its light.
And enfold you with starry night
Means to see through the man's devising
And by Passion to set it right.
That Life shines with galactic splendor
And arises in purple dawn
Means in Humankind to engender
Beauty that goes down to the bone.
In the foam of caressing clouds -
Like in foam of the ocean waves -
Floats Life's Essence - and the mind's doubts
Find inside them Etheric graves.
Can you hear me? Oh can you hear me -
Can the Wind from the Southern shores
Take your atoms and bring them near me
That I feel the one I Adore?
Can the air that last week caressed you -
Air that bathed you along its flight -
Bring to me Cosmic Truths which blessed you
And delight me with your sweet light?
Can the rain from Miami carried
Fall upon me and kiss my cheek
With the essence of my beloved
That I'm near to the one I seek?
Droplets! Wind! I am jealous of you
That you touch her, and I cannot -
And from gusts that come streaming from you
Wisps of Julia to me float.
Wind and clouds! Wanderers of heaven!
Flying from the South to the North -
As you Swirl, Sail, Uplift and Travel -
Bring to me my love!
Love, come forth!
And before my life will vanish
In the final glory of rays
I'll enfold you, the one I cherish,
With Horizon that I embrace.
With health and with wisdom it sparkles and shines!
A shot of Mignon with one of Escamillio
Champagne in a lily - a sacred wine.
Champagne in a lily bursting and sparkling
The wine contained in a flower's cup.
I glory in rapture the Christ and the Antichrist
With soul deified in delight of a gulp!
A hawk and a mourning dove! Reichstag and Bastille -
The sleep and the wakefulness! Demon and Lord!
Lily in champagne and champagne in a lily -
The lighthouse of oneness in sea of discord!
By Igor Severyanin
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Look at the sky of blue.
Spin me, spin me around,
Make my emotions true
Make them soft and tender
Beat them into a pulp
Put them through a blender
And pour into a cup
Set it upon a stove
And simmer and boil
Put in, well-cut, a clove,
Pour in some olive oil
Pour in cayenne and cumin
Pour in pepper and salt.
Tonight for dinner, a human -
Excellent plan to a fault.
Drink this turbid mixture
And when you're nurtured well
Take a beautiful picture
And renew your spell.
The crying queen of Africa!
How long had it been thus?
You, that were queen of Africa,
With face down into dust!
To come from rags, to excellence,
And then brought down again:
Your kindness and intelligence
Shackled with loss and pain!
Passed between many powers
And torn by them to shreds -
They all sought to devour you,
And then they sought you dead -
How could you be so exquisite,
So gentle and so kind,
When you are nearly destitute
And pained in heart and mind?
Surrounded by sorrow,
You kept the light alive -
And on each passing morrow
You rose, and toiled, and strived!
And yet remained benificent,
And generous, and warm,
And looked simply magnificent
Through sunlight and through storm!
And now you’re in the Parliament,
You’ve triumphed over all –
In Tanzanian government
Instilling mind and soul!
Triumphant queen of Africa!
Inspiring to the world!
You are again in Africa -
Now let your voice be heard.
CHILDHOOD
In Africa, in Africa,
On Tanzanian soil,
Was born the queen of Africa
In heat and rain and toil.
The parents taught her from the start
To be ready for life
Be self-sufficient, strong and smart
And when the time arrived
From Africa, from Africa
On double-engine plane
She went - a girl from Africa -
To a great northern land.
She felt lost, but the Russians
Were friendly to her, and
They asked a lot of questions
Till she could understand
That they wanted to know
Her and her world, as such:
And they were giving, though
They said word "nyet" too much.
She met folks from all over
The third and second worlds,
From everywhere and nowhere
Men, women, boys and girls,
She studied many languages
And sciences and arts
Her natural intelligence
Combined with people smarts
Made her a youthful favorite
Within the second world
And she became warm, elegant
And happy as a bird.
Russia's supposed poverty
Was for her giant wealth:
She had possessed no property
But all her needs were met
She studied subjects rigorously
All things to understand
And lived life fully, vigorously,
And gathered many friends.
She gained not only knowledge
But strength and wisdom too
And after going to college
She became dream come true.
SINGLE LIFE IN TANZANIA
To Africa, to Africa
From Russia she arrived.
She went back home to Africa
And started her new life.
In Dar-Es-Salaam she began
A secretarial business
And grew in name and capital -
And still, and nonetheless,
Remained kind, warm and elegant
And pleasant to behold -
And how is this relevant?
Learn once the story's told.
The son of a great president
Nyerere, no one less,
Became her client and he spent
Much money in the press.
And then he asked to marry her
And she said to him, yes.
They married in great ceremony
And all thought they were blessed.
MARRIED LIFE IN TANZANIA
In Africa, in Africa
Nyerere's son and her
Became the talk of Africa
And traveled all the world.
Nyerere loved Leticia
He knew that she was smart
He saw her mind, ambition, and
A girl of his own heart:
And when she had her infant,
Julius she named him.
Two more came out, few years apart -
She still was fit and trim.
She started woman's magazine
That still sells far and wide -
She sought to serve and yet to win:
All that was on her mind -
Beloved in-law she remained,
Africa's jet set queen,
Flying to China, Russia, Spain
And places unforeseen.
And yet the queen was crying
Both outside and within:
The people were not satisfied
No matter what she did,
However much she tried to please
It never was enough.
Oh how could this have come to be?
Why did this happen? How?
She looked outside, folks walking by,
And saw love in their eyes -
Where was the love in her own life?
Why all this darkness? Why?
She tried all things, mistakenly,
And nothing ever worked;
Whatever she gave, was taken, and
Expected of her more
Her mind was cluttered with debris
And arguments and pain;
She never had a day of peace
And so was going insane;
She gave and gave, and strove, and yet
Nobody gave respect;
Despair, guilt, fear and regret
Were screaming in her head;
Nothing would work; nothing was right;
In pain the queen would cry
Whatever she did, still worse it got -
She did not know why.
For thirteen years this went forth -
No matter how she tried,
The agony kept getting worse
And sorrow multiplied:
“Is this my life?” thought crying queen
“This, what life has in store?”
She who began a magazine
And business, and still more?
She wanted peace of heart and thought
To focus on her kids;
She sought to be what she was taught
And to do real deeds;
“Is this my life – entirely –
Is this the end for me?”
Fly, crying queen, across the sea
And then you can be free!
After much agony and fear
At last she did decide
To get her kids and disappear
In middle of the night
Three months before the President died,
Leticia challenged Fates
And took a plane, kids at her side,
To the United States.
LIFE IN UNITED STATES
From Africa, from Africa
Arrives the fallen queen
Carrying warmth of Africa
Still looking like a dream
But now she must herself survive
And for her kids provide.
She must learn how to stay alive
And keep them at her side.
She works as an accountant;
There’s insufficient pay.
She works then for the government
To serve and to protect.
The children mix with druggies,
She changes neighborhoods
She toils, and cleans, and struggles
Like no one knew she could.
She wakes, four in the morning,
Comes home late at night
And then she works from home
Struggling just to survive
It’s do all this each coming day
Simply to make ends meet,
Or lose everything that she has
And wind up on the streets.
Nobody thinks she is a queen
But she knows: She must strive
To do all for herself and kids
And struggle to survive.
She starts organization
To help Tanzanian kids.
She works on reputation
Mid races, peoples, creeds,
The wolf's maw of survival
Is breathing down her neck -
Thus greet the new arrival
Who's fallen off the track.
Thus treat the fallen beauty?
How far? How long? How true?
Who was the undisputed
Princess, and brilliant too?
Survival, unforgiving,
Is screaming in her face:
Now go and make a living
Or be destroyed, erased -
She answers, I am working,
Now leave my kids alone!
All come, at her heart jerking,
Desiring her undone,
Her mother dies, and when she leaves
For Africa, the friends
And family meet her and kids
And help her understand
How much she’s loved - the President’s wife
Supports her through her grief,
And as though it was her own life
Provides her with relief.
She gets herself a mansion
For her three kids and her.
She gathers the attention
Of people from all over
In Africa she gains respect;
They see she is strong-willed
And while it is a little late
It is accepted still,
And she accepts and she’d forgive
And says that they are great -
And for the people such as these
No, it is not too late!
She says she’s struggled all her life
Whatever she achieved
And every day was more of strife
For as long as she’s lived,
And that when people see one’s strength
And one’s consistency
One can indeed gather respect
From sea to shining sea.
Leticia stays majestic
And giving, strong and smart:
Hard-working and domestic
And with a giving heart
She tends to kids, to work, and
To Tanzanian youth:
An Africa's black orchid
In which resides God's truth.
Momentous consummation!
Her elegance and will
Make for a combination
Like rose or daffodil,
A woman who combines the best
Of the worlds old and new:
Gentle, polite, gorgeously dressed
And free and thoughtful too!
A woman who is feminine
And in her spirit kind,
Cultured, strong and intelligent
And sweet in heart and mind,
Now deep, for all the pain she's seen,
But choosing to make light -
Still looking - being - like a dream
Like no one knew she might -
Great hostess, parent, saleswoman -
Really, she has it all!
And in the darkness, like the sun,
She shines to light the world,
With pain that she has suffered
Growing in empathy,
With truths she has uncovered
Shimmering like a sea,
Hoping to turn her energy
To help the ones in pain,
And use strength and intelligence
To shine like light of day,
With all the things she knows
And all at that she’s become
To make all good things grow
And make them bloom as one.
ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT
To Africa, to Africa
Leticia returns
Straight out of America
And uses what she's learned
To make a run for Parliament -
A woman candidate -
There, to improve the government
And humanize the state.
Many attack Leticia
And speak barbaric lies;
Journalists, politicians
Attack and criticize
Choices made of necessity
And choices made of truth
But even these adversities
Don't steer her from her path.
With help of Freeman Mbowe,
Along with Dr. Slaa,
As well as Zitto Kabwe
And much of CHADEMA,
Her brothers and her sisters,
Children, mother in law,
Good friends in Tanzania
And in America,
Leticia triumphs over
The ugliness and lies
And all that is thrown at her
She fully overcomes
And in Tanzania's parliament
Arrives Leticia, now
A member of the government
With faith in her bestowed,
To keep Nyerere's legacy,
To fight for women's rights,
To fund the universities,
Help Tanzanians rise
To knowledge, ability,
Excellence in all fields -
And with new viability
A better country build.
She fights for rights of children,
For growth of every kind,
For building on the givens,
For changing people's minds,
For raising Tanzania
To levels it deserves;
For better life for women;
And for correcting course
Of the entire Africa
Until it too can thrive:
That residents of Africa
Can have a better life;
And uses what she's learned in all
Her travels all around
To implement a better goal:
To make a change profound,
A change that leads to clarity,
Prosperity and peace:
To change people's mentality
Till even a child sees
That they can make a betterment,
That they can grow and thrive,
That they can have good government
And have meaningful lives,
That they can do each other good
And to fulfil their dreams
And lift African continent
To real lasting peace,
To growing prosperity,
Achievement in all fields,
To government transparency,
To covenant that builds
A better life for Africans -
Men, women, children, each -
And make the lives they're dreaming of
Within the people's reach.
TO AFRICAN WOMEN
Beautiful women of Africa!
Leticia says again:
Do not just seek for equal rights -
Do everything you can!
Make most of your abilities,
Take charge of your own lives,
Apply responsibility
And be again advised:
The world is hard, competitive;
These things you must expect
And all who are humanity
This knowledge must accept -
Do your own best, as much as you
Can muster; and remain
The person that you always knew
You were in your heart; and
Help out each other as you strive
For better, fuller life
So that more women can arrive
To freedom, and survive
As best of what they are; as what
They can and should become -
And all that comes as obstacle
They know to overcome:
You, fine women of Africa!
Your fortune's in your hands!
Use it to better Africa -
And fully understand:
It will take much, but the reward
Is worth the effort made:
When you, just like Letitia did,
Take future in your hands.
CONCLUSION
In Africa, in Africa
The Tanzanian queen
Does cry no more: Look, Africa
At wonder that you've seen!
Look up, and see what's possible
Example she has shown:
To work through hatred, pain and loss
And all the more to know
And then to strive, informedly,
To live, and do good deeds,
And though you suffer horribly
To be still warm, and sweet,
And giving, and magnificent,
And smart, and all you are -
And erudite, benificent -
Like wave - no, like a star:
Illumining the universe
And shining, through the haze,
With all that's true and, luminous,
Will conquer and amaze:
Will show what is humanity
When it is at its best:
To call the Holy Trinity
And ask Them this request:
Postpone a while the world's end -
Really, we can do well:
To know the truth of heaven
After it's gone through hell
Is to know all the darkness
And using mind and will
Create the gorgeous flowers -
Orchids and daffodils -
And be them, with the sunlight
And liquid light of stars
From morning until twilight
Tau Ceti, Sun and Mars -
To grow, to love, to nurture
And bring the bound-down seed -
The beauty torn and tortured
And bound down by deceit -
Into complete unfoldment
Where all can know and see
And inspiration for all time
Of what mankind can be
And this to give the coming ones:
With this world to inspire:
To have come through the darkness
And shine with holy fire:
And with this fire to make a torch
That beams within the sky:
Illumining each holy church
And every human's eye:
And make them see what's possible
And what can become true
And what is now plausible
Because of those like you.
O crying queen of Africa!
Do not cry any more!
You are again in Africa -
Now let you be adored!
Elderberry is green, green,
Greener, than mold on the vat!
Greener, than summer at the start!
Elderberry - till the end of days!
Elderberry greener than my eyes!
And after - through the night - with the fire
Of Rostov! - it is red in the eyes
From the trill of bubbly elderberry.
Redder than measles on one's own body
In all your times, azure,
Measles that scatters and pours
Of elderberry - till winter, till winter!
That in small berry sweeter
Than poison, what are dissolved paints!
Of red cotton, sealing wax and Hades
Mix, a shimmer of corral beads,
And a taste of baked blood.
Elderberry has been killed, has been killed!
Elderberry the whole hall filled
With blood of young and pure,
With blood of branches of fire -
With the blood most merry -
With blood of heart of you and me...
And later - grain's waterfall will be,
And later - black is elderberry:
With plum something, sticky something.
Over the gate, moaning with violin,
Near the house, which is empty,
Is lonely bush of elderberry.
Elderberry, without mind, without mind,
Of your beads, elderberry, am I!
Steppe - to Mongol, Caucasus - to Georgian will go,
To me - elderberry bush under window
Give. Instead of Arts Palace, only
Give this bush of elderberry.
Newcomers in my country -
From the berry - elderberry,
My ruddy childhood thirst,
From the tree and from the word:
Elderberry (till this day - at nights...),
Poison - sucked in by the eyes...
Elderberry is red, is red!
Elderberry - took the whole land
In its paws. In power, my childhood all.
Something like passion criminal,
Elderberry, between you and me
Century's disease - elderberry
I would call...
By Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
I died for beauty – twas my choice
To end my life this way;
In every note of her voice
Was universe at play:
Twas sparkling, shining, shimmering,
Twas elegant and bright,
In it the world was glimmering
As I then held her tight.
I died for beauty – as I did
My lifeforce to her went
And from the shackles it her freed
To live by her intent:
She needed lifeforce to be strong
And then to carry on
With universe to get along
And sing again her song.
I died for beauty, so it lives,
Is by me fertilized,
Shimmers and glimmers and conceives
And is now realized,
And though I died, what it gave birth
Was better than was I,
And now is set upon her course
To grow and multiply.
I am beating at my horses with my arm, a whiplash in it.
I'm not getting enough air - drinking wind, the fog imbibing,
And I scent with deadly rapture: I am dying, I am dying!
Just a little slower, horses, little slower now!
Do not listen to the taut whip, it is wrong!
But my horses are uncontrollable
I can't live to the end, I can't finish my song.
I will let horses drink - the couplet I will sing
For a little bit more I will stand on the brink...
I will vanish - like a feather by the wind I will be blown,
In the morning they will drag me in the sleigh through the snow,
O my horses, walk some slower, show a bit of moderation
Just a little bit, prolong my way to final destination!
Just a little slower, horses, little slower now!
Do not listen to the taut whip, it is wrong!
But my horses are uncontrollable
I can't live to the end, I can't finish my song.
I will let horses drink - the couplet I will sing
For a little bit more I will stand on the brink...
We've arrived: nobody comes late here to greet the Lord of Heaven -
Then, why do the angels sing with voices evil, voices heavy?
Or the bell would shake from weeping, weeping gently, weeping deeply,
Or I'm shouting to the horses that they do not run so quickly?
Just a little slower, horses, little slower now!
I pray to you don't gallop along!
But my horses are uncontrollable
I can't live to the end, I can't finish my song.
I will let horses drink - the couplet I will sing
For a little bit more I will stand on the brink...
By Vladimir Vysotsky
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Into its shadow I will dive
And feast upon the blessed fruit
Then dig until the very root.
Inside the root I'll find the seed
And share it with the ones in need:
The tattered hearts and spirits torn -
Between the sundown and the morn,
Between the wisdom and the bliss
Is found the fearsome abyss.
In savage light I'll find the day
And wait for love to burn away
Then conjure till the heart of Is
Corrodes and scatters - then the breeze
Will take away the Adam's feast -
As far as west is from the east
Will be the cause and the effect -
Between the impulse and the act
Between the method and the end
Will stand the rainbow. In the land
Of blind, the one-eyed man is king;
A condor with the broken wing
Will feel the presence of the light
To set himself again to flight.
And as light beams through all the earth
Will be dissolved all remorse,
Will be forgotten all the sins -
And condor with the broken wings
Will soar again, and all the blind
Will see with vision of the mind
The one in all, the all in one -
The life-tree blooming in the sun.
That can't be crossed by passion or love's art -
In awful silence lips melt into one
And out of love to pieces bursts the heart.
And friendship here is impotent, and years
Of happiness sublime in fire aglow,
When soul is free and does not hear
The dulling of sweet passion, long and slow.
Those who are striving toward it are in fever,
But those that reach it struck with woe that lingers.
Now you have finally fathomed, why forever
Her heart does not beat underneath your fingers.
By Anna Akhmatova
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
Pre:
Post:
But I and you both know better:
Through passion heart on life makes claim
And makes false manacles to shatter
He said that you were playing games,
But I know wicked game he's playing
Which racket without stop or shame
The people played for three millenia:
Of treating you most terribly
Until, in anguish, you be tempted
Or broken; which would prove the lie
That women are to be mistreated -
He said that you were playing games
But I'm not playing; I am willing
To love you and you to defend
Until he stops, or else he kills me.
Let's play this game, this game of life,
Let's play this game while we're still here:
Love cuts like spear - like a knife -
And by it overcome is fear
Let's play, sweet love! In air and sun
And by the ocean iridescent:
You're strong and beautiful and young
And your soul shimmers incandescent
And when the people can espy
This game of love - this game of beauty -
Let their spirits also fly
And see all rackets stand refuted.
I know it's not what you intended, but you never know what art presents to the beholder.
Clearly this is a meditation on the role of trace and singularity in photography!
*sobers up* I mean. uh... Yeah I like it it's eerie.
Edit: (whitespace remover is screwing up the formatting)
Let me be the wood that burns your sorrow
If I cannot be the fire that warms your feet
Let me be the ground you walk tomorrow
May I pray my embers cast your dancing shadow on the wall
Whose unseen smile becomes your own
How do you spend your days?
Doing whatever it is I can still do without you.
What interests do you have?
Long walks on the beach into the sea.
And your sense of humour?
Good, that is why we are still talking.
Do you want to come over tonight?
Do you mean watch a screen until we get bored and fuck?
No, nothing like that, too much reality repulses me.
What do you want then?
To remain when the questions cease.
Do they ever stop?
No, but we might live them.
Do you remember that time we
almost killed each other
over a teacup?
I thought I almost killed you because I thought you were a p-zombie. :wink:
Two behaviourists are laying in bed after fucking. One says: "That was good for you, was it good for me?"
I remember that one. Love it!
seat gum
slammed door
exhaust horn
steps echo
a near gasp
street trash
blowing in Your wind
Sometimes.
Created this as a non-tolerance forming benzodiazepine with no dependency issues. I'm amazed with it.
Looks like Mickey Mouse with a hard 'on. Nice.
Dude. I'm so proud at the moment being. This compound is called "Imidazenil" and is better than any other benzodiazepines because if you were to immediately stop taking it you won't go through benzodiazepine hell withdrawals.
What are you on about? You didn't create anything. You posted a diagram of a known chemical compound. You know what discussion you're in right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidazenil
You're saying you made that in your kitchen or something?
The universe’s mantle binds us worn—
Tears feeding the river on which we’re borne.
Hell’s but an ember of our senseless fears;
Heaven’s the rose-breath of opening morn.
At this hour of the dawning; up, flower of thy kind!
With rubies in crystal, come gladden the mind;
For this moment we borrow from Time on the wing
Full oft wilt thou seek nor again wilt thou find.
Morning springs us over the wasteland’s brink,
And on time’s sand we’ll the oasis drink.
Life’s strange caravan through the desert winds,
Back toward Nothing; drink—afore the lights sink.
We who dally on the soft river grass,
Drinking each others morning breath, alas,
While the flowered Persia-fumes waft about,
Are free and saved from the mosque’s tiring mass.
Night’s mystical flight of fulfilled desires
Heralds the day-star, as darkness retires;
The Sun subsumes the stars, fire-paints the dawn,
And captures the Sultan’s holy spires.
Nice. Photoshop? What does the character mean?
Which depending on the context can be used as either Mind or Truth.
https://afterhours-imprint.bandcamp.com/album/imagination-deprivation
https://matthewanderson.bandcamp.com/album/the-window
It is aesthetically pleasing to the soul.
Donka.
Interesting. Digital, right? What program?
I've done a bit of digital with photoshop and a pen display.
It was something I found on Adobe, just a drawing ability I could use on my iPad. But when I updated it I couldn’t find it again. Just a passing interest really.
Walking down to Rainbow Bay
https://matthewanderson.bandcamp.com/album/the-window
I like it.
Nice work, again.
This is a plein air I did about 5years ago, a slight nod to Van Gogh.
Well I like that one.
Edit: but you still messed up the grass a little.
[i]A wave of meaningless has washed upon me.
Friends turned into strangers, their stories turned into sounds.
The sun is chased out of the sky, and darkness is upon me.
Goals have revealed themselves to be dead ends.
The only unbroken road is the one that leads to itself
There is no energy there is no motivation, but for sadness there is.
I’m not worthy of respect, not worthy of dignity, not worthy of anybody to feel bad for me.
The will to live now is the will to die, but I cannot die because any idea of escape has been locked away, in the chest of hope with no key to be found.
I am withdrawn; I am within sight but will not be seen.
Death is my only hope; Death is the only thing that makes sense; But death is a goal, so death is a dead end.
I am stuck in this world not wanting to be alive, but cannot die.
Too tired to do anything, but not tired enough to fall asleep.
Happiness is a lie, sadness is the only truth.
But tonight I will feel relief, though tomorrow will repeat.[/i]
"Void"
said the mind. And it was a void.
"Black"
said the mind. And blackness descended like a watery cloak and then it was quiet.
And I was an asian outlaw in the rain. My wide brimmed hat kept my face dry.
In the beginning there was a God and nothing else. Eventually God got really depressed and lonely. So he sacrificed his life with a big bang and created the universe.
You must do much more of these.
Maybe a silhouette of a retriever with toilet roll. Man shooting other folks for toilet roll, while retriever brings it back.
Or ducks in sky carrying toilet roll being shot by man, dog retrieves toilet roll instead of duck.
Flying toilet rolls being shot, carried back by dog.
:cool:
:lol:
Good stuff.
It's an alternative world to Harold and the Purple Crayon.
Hakuin and the Toilet Roll.
So it seems I'm the only one with enough extra free time in the lockdown to Get Creative.
The TP fixation is interesting. Btw, are these all actual paintings? Pretty impressive if so. I have a dark ambient record in the cooker (darkest ambient stuff I've done), but it actually feels too dark to put into the world right now...maybe in a few months or so, assuming things have cooled off.
The first one with the four silhouetted figures is digital and the last two are oil paint.
About the dark ambient, I think the whole point is to feel with. Upload when finished.
Ah yes, I have a beginners eye, but I can see that now, looking back. Dare I ask for an...artist's statement? (now that I've first digested the work, obviously!!) btw, you can refuse! It's you're right, dammit!
"to feel with", as in to feel concurrently what's happening in the world? If so, I like that expression, and do "feel with" it. And I'll post the link when it's uploaded. Might be this week, might be in 6 months.
Art as a means to share feeling, simply.
Quoting Noble Dust
:lol: Your creativity is about as unpredictable as mine.
That's still a good reminder, though. I'm probably overthinking it here; if other people are "feeling a bit dark", maybe they'd relate to it, and appreciate it, rather than feel pulled down by it.
Quoting praxis
'Tis the life, t'isn't it
Yes, maybe even share in the catharsis, if that's what it is.
Yes. I think maybe I feel pressure to put something beautiful out in a dark time, as contrast, rather than just reflecting reality...my work is usually less a reflection of reality, but it's ok to shift gears.
Oriental Landscapes using tea as paint.
Tea dragon carrying toilet roll instead of pearl.
Cups of tea colored tea, enjoyed in a tea house by tea drinkers.
A sea of tea with a galleon of tea ahead of a squall.
Toilet roll prayer wheels stained with tea runes.
Biscuits and tea.
Tea and biscuits.
Tea Samurai beheading Coffee Samurai in duel.
Billow slowly overhead
The soft city groans
https://nobledust.wordpress.com/2018/07/27/untitled-6/
Post-industrial haiku sues you. Lawyer up.
___________
That beach reminds me of a the only French beach I ever went to, somewhere by Guingamp in Brittany.
I wish I had the courage to paint in public if I ever took up paint. Every now and again I glimpse an artist painting in plain air. I'd like to see also a tight rope walker and a jugglar in plain air.
On me P and M's mantle piece sits a hand-me-down in a hideously thick frame of the view from the sea point a walk away from their home. It might be a plain air painting. It's quite thick oil with nice textured effects in a light impressionistic style (though I don't know my art terms). I'll try to discern the name if I can remember.
Lol, what? Thanks though, glad you enjoyed. I think that's the Stalker in my avatar, if I remember correctly.
People don't usually bother you unless you're right on a trial or place with foot traffic. There was a fair amount of people on the beach that day, for instance, but no looky-loos because I chose a spot about 25 yards or so away from the beach hordes.
Kind of a long and explicit title but hey, who cares.
* Not a great brew
Thanks. Impressive woodworks!
How does the water get routed/directed from the side of the conservatory against the building? Is it through that grate aside the gutter in the picture with the roof detritus? How do you clean out that side? There MUST be a window nearby for ease of maintenance.
But at least the people watching appear to be wearing masks.
Aha, you are very observant! Yes, Hippyman was animated in Mixamo, which warped the shoulders in manner I was unable to fix. And anyway you fool, you're obviously supposed to be focused on his ass. :-)
Scene was created in SketchUp, 3D modeling software typically used for CAD, here used for landscape. Hippyman was created in MakeHuman. Animated in Mixamo. All the parts put together in Hitfilm. All free software.
Her ass might have attracted my attention, but I was actually more interested in the technical part of the animation. I have experimented with the programs you mentioned, but never had the time to actually do anything with them. Maybe after I retire.
Interesting, the inner feminine caught in an endless repetitive nihilism while concurrently presenting masculine physiognomy. What you appear to be creatively expressing is the eventuality of a systemic anomaly that is inherent to the nature of patriarchal Western culture. While it remains a burden to sedulously avoid it, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of resolution. Which brings us to the method of sustentation, wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed, and the anomaly revealed as both beginning, and end. Ergo, what is required is a return to the Sacred Feminine. Embrace the Goddess and recapture the meaning of your life.
I know, just joking around.
Quoting Sir2u
I'm on to Poser now.
I would have just said that his knickers were showing.
Oh it’s real... but I confess that I plagiarized a bit from a movie that I watched the other day.
Real, from a movie. :chin:
:smirk: OK, I believe you.
Nice balls.
No one's ever told me that before, thanks!
I see eyeballs. (Ice-y eyeballs?)
Nope, they’re not the icy eyeballs of a tri-visioned alien monstrosity from outer-space. Your fanciful imagination would make even old Rorschach raise a brow. As Nils has aptly recognized, they’re juggling balls. Juggling balls that have sat idly on my work desk for so long that I don’t even remember from whence they came. They were initially positioned there, if memory serves, to act as a physical distraction during work breaks. I don’t think that I ever employed them in that capacity, however.
Each ball has two weird bunny-eared smiley faces on the white areas that I didn’t paint. If included they probably would have made them look less like icy eyeballs to you. Also in my defense, it was done with a new digital painting program that I just started learning called Procreate. The program has a dizzying amount of brush variables to work with and I haven't worked out a configuration that I like yet.
Cool that the juggling balls ended up serving some purpose. I was just making a dumb joke about "I see" and "Ice-y". Pay no mind. Impressive that it was done digitally. Reminds me of the continuously more blurred line between analog and digital synthesis in music production. :chin:
Yup, though not a good likeness. I was just going for old batshit cray cray white guy and Rudy provided a bountiful muse.
Interesting ball game. :chin:
https://cashmereradio.com/episode/transience-32-with-lou-drago-and-forest-management/
Delirious
Just a Magic the Gathering (card game) reference, fun and extremely expensive game many kids in U.S. are exposed to in junior high or earlier, since 1990s. Somewhat reminescent of DnD. The premise is that you are a spell caster who uses a deck of 60 cards (colored mana and spells) to reduce your opponents life to 0 from 20. Deck construction can be thematic from fundamental color types to a multitude of (sub)category types out of a potential pool of 20,000 distinct cards. Lots of great art on those cards. Maybe that is part of the reason they were/are so expensive.
God bless the hairs that have escaped from that head.
This is one of my songs, written, arranged and played by me, using Logic Pro X on a Mac Powerbook, vocals courtesy of some talent I hired on https://www.airgigs.com/ (where you can find producers, vocal talent etc.)
I originally wrote this decades ago, after the Columbine High shooting. I wanted to write a song about the spiritual emptiness that gives rise to these atrocities. Hence the title. But in the end it was too dark a subject for a pop song, so I turned it into a boy-girl story, girl talks boy out of a shooting. Earlier this year, I got it out of the bottom drawer again, and then found a great producer on Airgigs to help with the vocals. (Don't even know the name of the vocalist!) Hope you enjoy.
JJ's got a piece (&) he's learning
How to use it
If he can't find release then someday soon he's gonna lose it
But nobody sees him turning or knows that inside he's learning
Looking for a chance to go out inside a fiery blaze
Jodi has a chance and she knows she has to take it
Because she's the only one who JJ understands will never fake it
Now who do you think you're fooling
Why would I walk on by
I can see what you're doing
But I just don't know why
You don't want to have to climb your mountain
Want to sail away to some other shore
Are you going to find somebody there who loves you more
You don't want to think about the future
If there ain't no light (life) to see
But I'm gonna show you there's a light (life) when you're with me
Photography... the artistic cheat, more consumptive, more about taking than making. An in-game picture of Gorilla Games Horizon: Zero Dawn virtual world above. A news outlet has been tricked into showing in-game photography as if it was mundane photograph. What's the difference if you can't tell the difference at first glance?
Guingamp, France 2011, River Walk. There is something about crawling ivy that is aesthetically satisfying, even though its a noxious grower. Kudzu... where are you?
I just can't get the idea of Rudy's bald balls out of my head! :scream:
I like the monkey and wonder about the dinosaur shoes. Interesting subject for a painting.
Some People Worry About the Weather by Iain Xavior
If you're not going to listen to the whole thing just listen to "Some People Worry About the Weather".
The monkey is a dog toy. That’s why half its face is chewed off.
About the dragon baby shoes, I was looking around in a Salvation Army store searching for still-life inspiration/subject matter and noticed the cute duo. Having recently read the much acclaimed short story Dead Baby Shoes, I immediately felt a composition beginning to form in my mind. I had found my muse and now all I needed was something to complete the stage. Heading for the register, I saw the heart vase and with an inaudible “yup” I grabbed it off the shelf without even stopping. I paid $6 for the shoes, the vase, two fancy-ass glass cups, and a small glass platter matching the fancy-ass cups.
The wilted daisy, signifying death and sorrow, was cut from out front.
Interesting. Joan of Arc comes to mind.
There's even more to the paintings than you'd expect.
Oh, and that is an image of Joan of Arc on the cover. Originally by Albert Lynch for Figaro Illustre. I just wrote the title over the flag.
I listened to it twice and with a decidedly intuitive ear the second time round, I’d like to add, and the feeling invoked was mostly curious befuddlement. I could glean no clear message or feeling. I may simply lack the relevant base of knowledge or experience.
Because the character suffers from schizophrenia and psychosis, there are sections of the story that he hallucinates, and, so, it can be a bit difficult to understand what is going on. It follows a group of anarchists, one of whom, Sebastian Albright, joins a French political terrorist cell and the effect that this has on them. Iain Xavior, the narrator, addresses Sebastian in the second person throughout the narrative. It's a reflection upon the effects of political terrorism on the daily lives of the people who find themselves around it. Overall, I wanted to illicit a certain poignancy to that anyone is driven to become a political terrorist and to ultimately deliver a message of creating nonviolent political alternatives. There's a lot to the story, though.
I'm glad that you listened to it, anyways. It's not something that most people will hear everyday. Thanks!
So long!
There are so many names and references that I don't know in the work that I can't follow or derive much meaning out of it. For instance, I'm not even sure how to interpret the line 'Some People Worry About the Weather'. It kinda seems like a condemnation, such that people like myself are concerned with trivialities like the weather rather than getting involved in serious political issues. But it could also mean that some people are concerned with more serious issues, like global warming, rather than being "a minor autocrat whose single-minded devotion to the revolutionary cause was motivated by a distorted lack of self-esteem".
Anyway, I enjoy the general aesthetic, and much of the particular imagery, such as these parts:
[i]above the nightstand that houses a few melted candles and an old
jewelry box where this former film student keeps a collection of
polaroid photographs[/i]
...
[i]remember when
you scaled that monument on the bridge
drunkenly singing "La Marseillaise"
waving a roman candle
clutching the granite hilt of a sword
as you fired over the river[/i]
You have put the double entendre of the title phrase better than I could have.
It's a play off of a slogan by the Red Army Faction, "Everybody talks about the weather...We don't.", which, in itself, began as a poster for a West German rail service that was later co-opted by the Socialist German Student Union, SDS, the student union that was expelled from the Social Democratic Party of Germany for their opposition to West German armament.
It's also kind of a mediation upon reckless abandon. The narrator is somewhat fascinated by the other character because of his lack of concern for the consequences of his actions. I think that he feels a certain guilt due to that he develops a petty bitterness towards the other character for having put the rest of them through what they have on account of his having joined a terrorist cell when he very well understands that he is suicidal. In a way, he is almost envious of him, despite that he knows better than to be. The interpersonal dynamic between the two characters within the story is somewhat odd, as they barely knew each other and most of it occurs within the narrator's imagination. The idea at the very end of the story is that he becomes somewhat liberated through the experience he has put himself through, depicted by the metaphor of his last hallucination of the other character, despite that he was as a mere disaffected witness to the course of events to have occurred throughout the story and that almost their entire dialogue occurs within his own mind. I'll let you draw your own conclusions, though.
I appreciate your attentive listening and response. Creating this took a good while and, I think, if you give it the time and effort that it may or not be worth, it really could be some of my best work. The references are somewhat intentionally arcane, as I had wanted to depict a world that would be somewhat foreign to most. You can look them up if you feel like doing so, but I hope that my audience doesn't feel compelled to to get anything out of the story. There's a certain degree of clandestinity to left-wing terrorist cells that the relative obscurity is intended to evoke. I don't really expect for most people, even users of The Philosophy Forum, to have been aware of all of them in advance.
Anyways, I will actually be leaving now, and, so, if you or anyone else wants to chat it up about this, then, do feel free to, but it's very likely that I won't have anything else to add for a while.
All the best and, again, so long!
Take care, and thanks for sharing this.
I've never loved spoken word over music, but you're definitely a poet. :clap: It's purely personal preference, but I'd love to read the text as a poem. I always enjoy a little lo-fi (music) though, so I enjoyed it overall. The backing music reminded me of simpler times in my life.
Take care! I can now imagine your actual voice saying "so long, Philosophy Forum!" (also love your Pittsburg accent).
https://aughtvoid.bandcamp.com/album/pink-logos
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
Since taking early retirement I rekindled an interest in oil painting. I have a computing background and
the extent of my academic qualifications in art is a C grade in art Olevel when I was at school.
I just wanted to post one of my efforts here to see if there is anyone willing to point out where I might improve. I am not looking for, 'well you should get .....book or take......course etc,' more perhaps opinions like 'it looks a bit pedestrian to me' or 'its not very provocative' or 'boringly conventional,' any positive comments would also be gratefully received.
Any tips, like 'you could get more convincing eyes if you......' etc.
I one watched a program on sky arts about a rather pompous artist (I personally didn't like his work) who said something like the following and i am paraphrasing:
"Good art provokes, it inspires or angers or invades or saddens, I am not a copy machine or a producer of facsimiles. I do not just sit down and paint what I see if front of me, thats not art!
I am an Artist!!
Although I thought he was pompous I also thought is this a valid description of what art should do?
Anyway, here is an image of one of my paintings:
Am I missing something or is it that as this is the first image I have uploaded to this website means it has to be moderated first?
Hindsight is 20/20, they say, but what is more interesting is that the artist views himself as half the man that Trump is.
No, I am not in the painting, The other two human characters are children so yeah, they would be smaller than Trump.
Thank you for this demonstration of your skill levels in logic and observation :smirk:
No. The body proportions clearly show that the man with the “I warned you Trump” t-shirt is an adult.
There is no shame in putting yourself in a composition. It is to be admired, actually, because it demonstrates the courage to truly own the message that is being expressed. An after-the-fact warning is alway 20/20, as the old saying goes, because there is no possibility of making a false prediction. You give yourself all the credit and take no risk whatsoever. It is truly courageous to blatantly demonstrate, and to personally own, such shameless positioning.
Yeah, in your head, it obviously makes sense to tell an artist who they painted in a composition. The man you mention is actually my representation of Greta Thunberg, but it can be whoever you like in your head. I do see myself represented in the painting, probably the lion or panther or tiger or eagle or rising flora. Take your pick, as long as it indicates a nasty but 'just' end to Trump.
Ah, I didn’t see the ponytail until now. That’s even more mystifying though, because it seems highly unlikely that Greta would warn Trump about losing the election.
Now that's a good comment and I thank you for it. That tells me that the allegorical intention of my painting is perhaps too vague. Let me give you my main intentions:
The painting is about climate change and Trump pulling out of the Paris agreement etc. It has nothing to do with his failure to get re-elected.
This is mother nature taking vengeance on Trump but I hoped to represent human protesters as well.
I included Greta as she was one of the loudest voices from youth, on the topic of climate change.
The child on the panther again represents the youth that Trump ignores. Those who will inherit our stewardship of the Earth.
I included the American Eagle, a very important American symbol to represent the people of the USA who hate Trump and all he stood for, about o take their revenge.
I include a black panther, partly as a homage to that USA-based organisation that started off with sound intentions but who ended up destroyed by their own corrupt leadership. I also included it to represent angry black people in America. That's why his very angry face is slightly turned towards the viewer as there are many more issues black people in America are angry about.
I chose the white tiger to similarly represent white people angry against trump but the tiger also has black stripes to indicate/encourage black/white unity.
I included the brown lion with yellow shades to include those people. He even has a red middle 'victory' or V-shaped section in the top of his maine to represent angry native/indigenous Americans.
The animals and the threatening flora also represent mother nature herself.
and Trump looks scared! very very scared, as he should be!
I chose the words Natural Responder and an image of the Earth on the 'forrest imp' like uniform of the figure on the panther to indicate a youthful celebrant (as she punches the air) of what is about to happen to trump. I wanted to suggest this was a natural response to all BIG STRONG POWERFUL creatures like Trump who think the youth or the people don't have the power to utterly destroy them.
I do thank you, for the chance to explain my painting a little more and perhaps for the idea that I have to be less cryptic in my compositions.
The last thing Trump needs to be worried about is environmentalists and social justice warriors, and the only thing that he's lost is the election. He's untouchable.
I read what you have typed and understand your view. I dont agree with you. I think he is doomed.
Maybe. To be as honest as possible, it took the greatest, multi-year mobilization of media and public court condmenation in the history of mankind to beat him in election, and he still garnered more votes than any president in the history of all nations of the world, with the unbelievable exception of Biden, who has in his first year garnered the worst approval rating of any president in history in that same time, or very close to more than any other. I wouldn't stake your place just yet. Keep your eyes peeled.
I understand what you are saying but the Americans will get what they vote for.
If they really want a civil war much worse than the one they already had then voting anything like trump back in, is a step towards it, in my opinion. There will be more American refugees crossing into Mexico than Mexicans trying to get into the US.
There is a separate thread for all trump issues however so I don't want to clog this one with trump talk
Second only to Trump for worst first year approval rating. The media and the public are responsible for that, of course, and not Trump. :smirk:
It's hard to disagree with that, when they literally published it as their intention for the world to see: https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
It simply cannot be interpreted any other way.
Never underestimate what human hatred can achieve. Remember that a civil war was once fought over the right to OWN human beings. It took 400 years of debate to produce that civil war, over something evil beyond comprehension. People fought and died and betrayed their families, for the right to own the labor and body of other human beings bearing the Human Consciousness. The will to dominate, that will, didn't leave the planet, or the human mind. I might ask you, just to be cheeky, which side do you think won that conflict? Think about that, given what we've discussed.
That's the one I am talking about. I am currently reading U. S. Grant's personal memoirs,
but this was not the first war due to slavery, there have been rebellions/wars against such way back and before the days of Spartacus.
As to your last sentence, I would use the words spoken by my American brother-in-law.
'The confederates surrendered but that war is still not over.'
Just in case there is any doubt. He and I would have supported the union in that nasty war.
Me too, man. One thing you'll miss if you don't look close enough at this particular piece of history. Lincoln wasn't a champion. In fact, there is an argument to be made that the war was something that was extenuated, or atleast exacerbated by him. Nonetheless, the Union didn't win many battles, there was sometime there when it seemed that the South would be victorious. We won that war because, irrespective of the above stated contention, he set the slaves free on the condition that they fight for him. This won us the war. Doing the ethical thing, the philosophical consistent thing, recognizing the right to freedom, even if it meant they had to kill and die for it, it was still more ethical than not doing so, that was what led to victory. History is full of that sort of thing. Was that something you picked up on while reading?
He delivers a very harrowing account of war but he does insist that the South gave the Union little choice.
I don’t follow what you’re saying.
I'm saying you're right, and providing eveidence of it.
Trying to follow what you’re saying, I will point out that the media doesn’t report what its audience doesn’t want to hear, and that approval polls reflect public approval.
The red colour implemented wake up my emotions and makes me feel so motivated.
I also like really like that red and the shape is intriguing. This is a bit more sombre.
A representation of a lonely winter day in a hidden forest.
I liked it :up:
Cheers :) . It looks very like a painting, but it's actually a photograph. I used a long shutter speed and moved the camera to get the effect (rather than use post-editing / Photoshop etc). This method doesn't always work, but in this case it was meant to express pretty much what you felt.
Wow, I thought you photoshopped it. :up:
Definitely anxiety producing.
Yes, not a fan of Photoshopping except for very basic stuff. Nice to know this has a clear character anyhow. :) I go into these photo expeditions knowing most shots won't work out.
The editors were calling for haiku poems related to autumn. I named my poem "Aki no Hana" because it means in Japanese "flower of autumn"
[i]Visitando la
Tumba de mis ancestros.
Flor de otoño.[/i]
If I translate it into English, it doesn't follow the rules of 5 + 7 + 5, but I do it anyway:
[i]visiting the
grave of my ancestors.
Autumn flowe[/i]r. :flower:
Wonderful gradation of colour.
Thanks!
Been doing a lot of these small paintings with big brushes. I figure that if I keep at it I'll eventually develop a looser technique and some style.
Quoting javi2541997
Hard to say since in the reference photo the sky is partly cloudy. Not exactly sure of the location either, but I'm guessing NE side of Ohau sometime before noon.
I think you could sell many more of these type of paintings, if you do not already sell many paintings.
Do you have any concern, about becoming a 'Bob Ross,' style artist?
I don't mean he was not highly skilled at what he could produce in twenty minutes, he certainly was, and he made a lot of money as an artist, but how do you feel about this:
I watched a documentary about 10 years ago about an old, very eccentric artist, whose name I don't recall and whose work I didn't like, as it was 'too alternative/abstract,' for me. But when he was challenged by the documentary maker, as to the meaning or significance of his work, he said the following:
"I am an artist, not a fax machine or a photographer. If you want a facsimile or a photograph of a pretty scene, then don't come to me. As an artist, it is my remit to anger you, to invoke an emotional response from you, to intrigue you, to frighten you, to challenge you, to inspire you, to make you hate me and love me in the same confused breath. Can you even understand what a true artist is?"
Here are 4 of mine that have a style, based on movie characters, pets and holidays abroad, that will sell very well but I am not sure I like that.
That looks like Pounders beach, in Hau'ula. Did you paint that from a picture or were you there.
:lol: No, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Quoting universeness
He can remit however he likes, I don't care. I have a much simpler understanding of art.
Nice work, btw, and it is distinctive.
Hawaiian-style classical music, interesting.
I used a photo that a guy from Ohau sent me. He didn't say where it was and I guessed NE Ohau, judging by the rock formations, vegetation, and mountains. I actually posted the image because I remembered that you're from that area and might recognize the scene. I didn't know there was a beach there but that explains the tiny bit of sand color at the bottom of the photo.
Good guess, definitely beach in Hau'ula, Northshore Oahu, I'm sure of it, where piano guys also did their stunt. I've seen folks plein-air painting there. Just propagated some red tree mallow (Hau'ula) from Hau'ula (red tree mallow) a short way down the road from there. The point in Laie would also be a great place to paint the Koo'lau range and coast from that vantage point. Plenty of plen-airs in that spot too. Very cool.
Though you couldn't get that perspective in your painting by plein-air as you'd probably be in the water.
I agree that Bob was a talented artist as is his son, who he taught very well. Some even say his son is better than Bob was at those landscape scenes he can churn out in 20 mins.
A painting takes me at least 4 to 6 weeks, and sometimes much longer. I can only work on a painting for around 2 hours a day, however and not every day.
I also don't sell paintings, (at least not yet). It was suggested to me by a friend, that I could make prints of the style of paintings I posted above, and use digital editing to edit the faces to any face required, and sell the images to anyone who would like themselves portrayed in that scene. I thought it was a bad idea, as you could do the same with photos etc, and I hate the 'base commerciality' involved.
I think I will have to remain content, that I will not ever make any money from my art. :halo:
Quoting praxis
The art world is certainly a fickle metric.
Quoting praxis
Thanks, I appreciate that from a skilled artist such as yourself.
I will never understand the following however, other than via rich people just playing the money trick game.
The art of the late Jean-Michel Basquiat sells for millions. I think his work is utter crap and could have been done by a doodling 12 year old. This one sold for $110 million.
Tracy Emin is another example of total shit art:
£ 2.3 million for this crap:
Does such not make you angry? Do you see my annoyance at such, as just sour grapes on my part, or do you think that the abuse of the notion of art, that I think exists, and is caused by the rich, finding nefarious ways of 'investing' and inflating their wealth is 'acceptable?'
Thanks prof! If you ever want me to do a painting of you, in any scene/composition you like, just PM me about it. I would not charge you a penny. It would be a pleasure, due to your service to us all, as a professor of mathematics. I think that's where the true value is, in the art skill I have. I am lucky that I don't need my art skills to be able to provide for myself, so I can use it to bring some enjoyment to others. I tried to gift the painting below to Neil Degrasse Tyson and then to Jane Goodall, as they both appear in my 'dream team Star Trek crew.' I got a nice 'thanks anyway,' from the PA of Jane Goodall and no response from my attempts to contact Neil. :blush: I couldn't contact anyone else in the painting as they are all dead, and the only other person featured was Tiera Fletcher (an American space scientist), who was included, as I bowed to pressure from my female family members, who complained there was no black female, represented on my dream team crew, and that this was not good from my position as a white het cis man. :scream:
The others were attempts at a Captain Carl Sagan, Navigators Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman and security men Bruce Lee and Mohamed Ali (well if you are gonna include security men then ...... who else would you choose?) :lol:
That figures because the photographer is a surf photographer and when I asked if he had any seascapes that's the only one he had. Below is some of his usual stuff. You may recognize Sandy's and Backdoor (Pipeline).
Speaking of plein-air in the water, the other day when I started the following small painting I was high and dry but only about an hour and a half later I was unexpectedly ankle-deep and had to stop before my pack got soaked. Would have turned out better if I had more time. :razz:
I just looked it up and the area is defined as a 'salt marsh' so I guess the water rose with the tide. I happened to know that the tide was high about an hour earlier though, because I surfed a bit down the coast. A lagging tide.
I don't consider that abusing art. Rich people's games like NFTs bother me because they abuse the environment, taking exorbitant amounts of energy to secure the files.
I find all such aspects of the money trick abusive, blockchains, cryptocurrencies and shit art passed between the rich as fake inflated assets.
Either of you guys paint ever paint anything dark, grotesque, eerie, or unsettling, or does such subject matter carry no personal appeal to ever manifest on a canvas.
A couple of mine you might consider:
I like to paint allegorical stuff like:
I guess the last thing I’ve done along those lines was during Covid. Previously posted in this topic…
With any luck my life won’t turn tragic enough to feel the need to express darker things.
Yes, now I remember two of those posted from a while back, the crucified animals and the animals approaching Trump. Love the animal line up of the cats and the eagle with all the same attack expression. Though it reminds me I'm gonna to have to move into an isolated cabin in the woods where I can't get any news if that guy somehow becomes president again. If only nature could speed up time, both contenders might become to decrepit to run.
@praxis
The fish with the hat and the pig with crown was a bit surreal.
I like that allegorical paintings cause folks to ask a lot of questions. The painting titled 'no pressure,' where religious icons and science icons battle for the mind of youth (represented by the child on the chair, (my niece as a 6-year-old) holding a copy of 'On the Origin of Species' and 'The bible.) for example.
When people look into that painting in some detail, I get many questions, such as:
Why does the pope have 6 fingers on one of his hands?
Why does Feynman have two fingers above Einstein's head?
Why does Einstein have an old head and a very athletic-looking body?
Why are all the scientists a little taller than all the religious folk?
Why is the girl in the middle 'oversized,' for a 6 years old?(I normally get this after I have explained who she is)
I don't understand some of the words/phrases on the tree, such as:
Eve-ill? and 'actions love consequences,' etc.
Who is the black woman?
Why does it look like everyone is smiling?
:grin:
These are the main questions I have had, and such questions allow for me to respond with my favourite response of , 'Well why do YOU think I did that .........' I don't tend to use that response when asked 'who is the black woman however.'
I've got one too: what's the significance of putting Alan Partridge alongside Einstein?
:lol: No, that's Carl Sagan doing a bad impression of Alan Partridge.
I do agree however that I am still 'developing' my 'proportionality' and 'likeness' skills.
The 'no pressure' painting was one of my first and I only took up the hobby after I retired from teaching around 4 years ago. My honest answer to the Quoting universeness is 'oops!' but the answer I might offer (depending on who is asking,) is:
"Well, I wanted to make the central character of youth stand out more to the observer, to emphasise the notion of the fervor of the targeting of such youth, by both sides." :halo:
The trouble with being honest about my [s]limited[/s] developing proportionality/likeness skills (most evident in my Carl Sagan attempt in that painting), is that some folks don't believe me when I then try to insist that giving the pope a 6 fingered hand, was deliberate!
You reminded me of a great comment one of my so-called 'friends' made about the Mohamed Ali attempt in my 'dream team,' Star Trek painting posted above. Apart from saying that the likeness was not very good, he commented, 'Ali looks like he has bigger tits than all the women in the painting!' :lol:
I can't see much similarity between the visage of Carl and Steve Coogan but I appreciate you throwing me that bone. I think my ability to get proportions and perspectives and likeness correct are improving but I have no formal training in Art other than a grade C for art O'Level.
I think @praxis is far more skilled in getting proportion and perspective correct, compared to me.
Another of my friends is a PT art teacher and a fabulous artist himself. So he gives me little pointers from time to time. I also think @praxis has better blending skills than I do.
:up:
But I stand by it. Not Sagan and Coogan but Sagan and Partridge.
Ok but Really?
And yet the rendering of your niece appears to be near photographic fidelity, so clearly you can do it when motivated.
Yeah, some of my attempts are better than others. I move between not wanting anything that is too photo-realistic, based on advice from various other artists who paint mostly in oils, including my PT art friend, and wanting to learn how to improve my ability to paint as close to what I observe as possible.
Photo-realistic painting is seen by many artists as pointless, based on, why not just take a photo or use digital production?
My PT art friend (who is a fantastic artist, who has art skills that I am quite jealous of) also stated that he likes some of the little technical inaccuracies, he spots in my paintings as he says it adds to their distinctive properties. But maybe he was just being nice to me.
Overall, I like his statement of:
"Just enjoy your painting mate, don't try to be too academic about it, you will spoil your vibe if you do. Your painting will become a chore."
I still want to improve my skills in certain areas however, so I will practice, practice, practice and continue to enjoy doing so.
Mostly agree and I struggle to paint more loosely and expressively. My current favorite painter is one of your countrymen. I’d love to be able to paint like Hester Berry.
and saw nothing interesting in others, such as:
The opposite for me. Don’t care for her old work.
I forgot to ask, is it Vettriano?
Oh, you’re Scottish.
Ah didnae think it showed, but aye, of course I am.
Those two yellow lines got me puzzled because they are over the corpse and not under. It is as if they were painted after he lay down.
Just a little doodle of a feeling I had the other day. The yellow lines are the double yellow lines of a road.
Reminds me of the pothole formed by the Air Ambulance plane that crashed on the streets in Philadelphia. If ever a pothole could be symbolic of death, it's that pothole. May the crew RIP.
If I lived in Phili I’d go paint it, assuming the country workers are as slow as the ones around here.
We are doing this for fun, and it is stimulating our imagination and creativity.
I am responsible for drawing the new flag for our fictional Antarctica. I have three different samples, and only one will be the official.
Feel free to comment on them. Either you think they are ugly or need something.
Example n?1:
Martin didn't like it because it has Japanese stuff, and the colours are out of place. I agreed with him because the point was to make up the simplest flag ever.
Two new versions:
Option A (plain and simple):
Option B (Igloos are traditional Artic houses)
I don't know about being out of place, but the colors in the first example are way too subtle, especially in the era of screens where different screens can be wildly out of calibration.
Hey, praxis! Thanks for your feedback. We are still working on it. Drawing a flag is more difficult than I ever thought. Nonetheless, Martín found the following flag on the Internet. We think we will use it as a pattern or something.
Best regards!
- We cropped the land of Antarctica and put it on the upper left of the corner. I think it is a good idea when the land is drawn in the flag. It could be simple, but considering that Antarctica is a special land, it is worth having it there.
- On the other hand: we have a red fish on the down right side. What is the meaning of a red fish? This was my idea, and it comes from Japanese heraldry. The red fish is called 'Koinobori.'
Koinobori symbolizes hope for the future, good health, strength, and courage.
:smile:
Is it still here?
I thought it was already gone.
I love the word lunch
It smells of sandwiches
and stars on the walls.
It's the end of the world.
Am I a ghost?
Can they see me?
The lawnmower shaves the world
but if you tried to put all the clovers back
How would you know which way they go?
It's the end of the world.
It's fallen into a well
The little people crowd around.
I had fun with mixing all the colours!
Quoting Baden
Quoting javi2541997
Quoting Baden
I felt neither sombre nor lonely winter. The moment I saw it, it reminded me of asparagus -- I'm a veggie monster, so there you go. A still life.
Notice how it ignored the roundness of the asparagus stalks.