#Ekphrastic Poem

[helenewate]

Beautiful Death

—after Botanica No. 23 by Gail Potocki

Bursting.

I am bursting at the seams. From within me, a rustle of leaves.

My skin severs, there becomes two of me. It stings, this gruesome separation of being.

Cold air floods my open wound, and I begin to bleed.

Blooming.

A buddling, from every last pump of my heart; each beat, a sproutling in the cavity.

Desecration pollinates my bloodstream. Death parrots the stench of beauty.

Begging.

There are roots in me and they are plenty.

I cannot contain them all, who must I beg for mercy?

Even in death, they will beautifully defile me.

— helene wate, aka olivia garrett

[atompowers]

Why so much life? I don’t know what to do with less I have given up all I have.

—Ilya Kaminsky, A Walking Man

From a new poem in partnership with the National Gallery of Art: A Walking Man by Ilya Kaminsky

“Giacometti is not working for his contemporaries, nor for the future generations: he is creating statues to delight the dead.” –Jean Genet

[hotwraithbones]

Continuous Cities 6 (A continuation of Italy Calvino’s Invisible Cities) by Ami J. Sanghvi

—Published in Prometheus Dreaming Magazine’s 2019 Prometheus Unbound anthology; semifinalist 🥀🌹

[bunnybearblogs]

Two Rivers

One of red, one of white

Forever running side by side.

Opposing currents that take travelers far away.

Always going,

Going,

Going.

The rivers ebb and flow

Sometimes sluggish and slow.

Other times rushing and racing.

Always going,

Going,

Going.

They go anywhere and everywhere

On fantastic journeys to places rare.

Just ride the currents that are

Always going,

Going,

Going.

[loveisadonkey]

Van Gogh Forgetting to Breathe While Furiously Painting Trees

An unfinished poem. Ready to grow, we’ll see where it goes:

[Van Gogh Forgetting to Breathe While Furiously Painting Trees]

Unable to express their fears

they burst at the seams.

So he paints them bright

without mouths

[tryst-art-archive]

Poetry Class Final Compilation: [The title's long so it's below]

(May 2011; this was previously "Untitled, 2011")

Untitled, 2003 (of which there are actually several, it turns out)

Nurses grow poppies –

            or tomatoes.

A nurse grows,

and there are lions and boars –

            birds of prey –

they have each other’s bodies –

            men with feline faces and breasts

under the bristles of hogs –

they are the aphids on our tiger lilies.

Pluck a Chinese dragon from

the branches of your staring poppy/tomato plant;

            tell me that it does not swoon!

for it is beneath your iron grasp, and –

that smug smirk of yours;

why do you detest nature? –

give me the zodiac animal, and

            I shall save him from the jeers

of your raucous bulbs. Go –

grow your flowers elsewhere, sweet nurse;

            there is no call for talking fruit.

[ek-phrase-is]

Le Pandemonium (1841) by John Martin

The Commandant

Who is he to presume

He may command the scene before him?

The helm and shield he wields

As magnificent and regal as they are

Are no apt tools against the fires

That rise to his feet

The bastion before him

Stretches far into the distance

Miles, perhaps, tens of them

It could not have been built

Or ruled

By human hands

Does he rule it nonetheless?

Is he human?

The flames surge tenfold

With a rise of his arm

No, he cannot be human

For his subjects are not men

But the very flames that burn below him

Yet do not touch his citadel

He is a god

A monster

Certainly he cannot be a man

Or, at least

He cannot be a man anymore

Who is he?

He does not simply presume

To command the flames

He does

They yield beneath his gaze

Like grasses before a wind

Or men before a blade

Perhaps he was a man, once

Perhaps he would’ve been burned by these flames

Those which he no longer fears

But whatever he is now, man or god

Or something entirely different

He is one of them

[batgovernor]

Ekphrastic poem: Jenna Le, 'Patti Smith, 1976'

Ekphrastic poem: Jenna Le, ‘Patti Smith, 1976’

This photo, black-and-white, where Mapplethorpe portrays his dark-mopped ex in profile, seated nude on wooden floorboards, knees drawn up to hide her breasts to hide her nipples, heated by the sideways radiator pipes on which she rests her palms, her bulging ribs a set of parallel oblique gray stripes rippling her bare white skin, unsmiling lips a short flat line– these were my first parameters,…

[whirlsofwords]

DAY AND NIGHT AT THE PARTHENON

Everything that was broken is still broken,

in a different shade. The city in the distance is

almost nonexistent now, except the little chain of lights—

more proof of life than when it was visible. Did the

Old World have a word for all these blues?

Wine-dark and wine-glistening and wine-smooth.

The wine-shine where your eyes have adjusted.

The wine-barrel of fading empty space. Everything

that was standing is still standing, in a different shade.

Day and night at the Parthenon. Yoshida Hiroshi, 1925.

[mftulin]

Video Poem: A Reluctant Moses Took the Staff by Mark Tulin

Video Poem: A Reluctant Moses Took the Staff by Mark Tulin

Many thanks to ArtMusing for publishing this poem online. Featured artwork by “God Appears to Moses in Burning Bush.” Eugène Pluchart, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. For more video poems, please visit Poetry by the Sea.

[samw3000]

The False Mirror

How perceptive was I ...The apple withered on the treeThrough frosted windows The soul you cannot seeA deceptive beauty The False Mirror by Rene Magritte – 1928 Photo by Abderrahmane Meftah on Unsplash © 2024 Samantha Williams. All Rights Reserved. OpenLinkNight #360 Thank you, Grace and the dVerse team!

[thirdwednesdayorg]

Two Poems by Donald Pasmore

[ktquimby]

Questions

—art: Hilary Baldwin, “Sundown II”

Start with the foreground:

salt marsh or fresh?

inlet? Tidal creek?

Is the central, silvery surface

bay? Lake? River?

Estuary?

Beyond, is that the opposite shore?

A line of clouds rising

from the horizon

bearing rain?

Neither day nor night,

twilight lives

with uncertainty.

Sometimes that is all

any of us can do.

https://hilarybaldwinartist.com/

bryanmemorialgallery.org

“Land and Light and Water and Air” is in the Main Gallery at the Bryan Memorial Gallery until December  2023.

[atompowers]

What is grandeur? Who is keeping score?

I believe in the circle, in light that surprises me, when I can

    believe nothing. The palm reaching out is a gesture, 

        a boundary, a circle one could slip through, or something

you could hold and in turn it could hold you back.

—US Poet Laureate Ada Limón, In the End, Everything Gives

From a new poem in partnership with the National Gallery of Art: Ada Limón, In the End, Everything Gives

What is above us?     The bleary algorithm of patterns, leaves,         towering history of law and lore?

[ivors20]

Will We Choose Wisely? (a Senryu)

On Monday a Geelong Writers poetry group went to Rachinger Gallery in East Geelong for an Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop. Here I am presenting the painting, “Owl” by, Gale Jarmyn, and my associated Ekphrastic poem “Will We Choose Wisely” Will We Choose Wisely? (a Senryu)The owl shook his head Angry feathers flew sideways “You must choose wisely!” Ivor Steven (c) August 2023

[nudeartpluspoetry]

El Greco's 'Christ on the Cross'

In El Greco's 'Christ on the Cross, ' earth rolls up into sky, which looks like sea- and it's all one blue-black mass behind the hanging man who said his reign was not of this shifty world.

El Greco's Jesus, stuck at the center foreground, isn't handsome, looks up exhausted, is almost out of here. A city's suggested beyond and beneath the nailed feet. It's no city you'd want to enter. Between the small mound of bones and limp urban spires, small men ride tiny white horses. There's

a flag, of course-a standard, which the painting's enormous blue note blows away like a dry leaf. Horses and men seem headed into a lifeless, lightless cave or copse. Without a doubt, the flag suggested power to occupied and occupiers both back then, as flags will do. El Greco's study's an indelicate bruise of black-and blue.

Hans Ostrom

allpoetry.com

Christ in Agony on the Cross, 1605, El Greco

Medium: oil,canvas