Veils To Clothe Botticelli's Venus - a poetry recording (2:37min)

Veils To Clothe Botticelli's Venus by Brenda Clews


Music by Buz Hendricks: Somewhere Off Jazz Street.
Buz created beautiful ethereal, jazz-influenced, sensual music for a poem I composed out of my Suite of Botticelli Venus Poems. The original track is at Jamendo. I reworked a portion of that track of music with a new reading of the central poem of the Suite tonight:

Veils to clothe Botticelli's Venus

A poem arises catching the energy, imparting meaning, hesitant, faltering for words, images, rhythms.

My love for you.

Slowly, through endless revisions,
shaping this love.

Disparate layers emerge, an undercurrent infiltered with strands, approaches, understandings, memories, hopes, desires,
the way the sensual mind composes.

We create ourselves through each other. It's more complete,
who I am with you.

Not a version of reality but a veil of being,
the poem of love that is
a transparent garment we clothe ourselves with,
our metaphors and concepts of a world

which resists
our gaze.

Writing is a deeply
meditative act.

A language of love.

A listening.

From Women In Summer - the process of painting

                                          

Lyric of Love

All I have to post is a little love poem inspired by some special music by a special musician who's beloved at Jamendo, Livio Amato, for my special, and secret, love:


Lyric of Love

-Sensitivity, Musa, Riela-

gently breaking on the waves
of our own oceans

seafoam of stars
falling over edges
pulling back in the underswell
of our desires

birds sweetly singing, ocean breezes, salt spray, morning light of gloss and glittering facets of cut gems

we cannot underestimate
the power of love

the ocean is driven by
inner forces as we are by love

wave patterns, oscillations of polished gems falling as notes of love from our Orphean songs

even as we approach the great mystery it recedes, ever pulling back and falling forwards, white foam melting into sand at our feet

-Dream opening-

then the grotto, magic, rock sanctuary, vision, a lover's cove

the dream of us opens

conch, periwinkle, nautilus, volva, cone, harp, trumpet shells, the music of the ocean at its shores

we are anchored in the swells, water
dance of love

or racing seaward, sails blooming
in the fast wind

-Suspended Animation-

sailing we are birds, osprey
sweeping over the waves
up to the clouds, joy, windsong
of strong wing

the wind who kisses the ocean,
or blows gales, passion

we dance on the beach framed by a disappearing red sun, burnished gong, palm tree fronds black with shadow as the dark washes over us carrying a full moon sailing through the night sky

-Yet, a moment-

we are the sky, the sun, moon and stars, the clouds drifting by, wind, the flying birds, dancing schools of bright fish, the diamond-covered expanse of
glittering

-Infinity-

one day we will wash away, drops in the ocean, no longer even a memory,

yet knowing
love loves
through us


-
Inspired by Livio Amato's album, Sensitivity: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/62537 (section titles are his song titles -I note the sections as I wrote while listening)

Free music for professional licensing

                                                        

Jack Gilbert: 'Failing and Flying'

A poem on love in The Writer's Almanac this morning, coming from an extraordinary place of wisdom:

Failing and Flying

by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

"Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Reprinted by The Writer's Almanac with permission.

                                                        

Dance of the Solar Wind (2:28min) makes it to #2 of 1,929 on SoundClick poetry chart

Poetry recording site:
Aural Pleasure.

Bullion of Hearts

Imagine a love that cannot be tarnished,
not even by us.

We messed the beauty we had,
with our switchbacks.

I demonize you; you decry me as a crazed woman.
We wouldn't speak to each other; my fury unabated
fierce.

You were a sleazy cheat; I was self-righteous, indignant.

What is this love that continues despite our resistance?

Surely not modern love, with its questionings, choices.

But some ancient love, as old as the gold sun itself,
primal, spiritual, enfolding its mystery.

What is a love that cannot fail itself?

And how can we trust it?

It is strange not to be fighting you
like a bad obsession, like an addiction to street drugs.

To accept your irrefutable, irrevocable
presence in my life.

The forever clause,
it's caught us
darling.

A Love Affair

This series of poems is about a love affair a few years ago. The gentleman and I haven't been in touch since. Enough time has passed for me to release this recording, made in March 2006. Most of these poems can be found in the archives at Rubies In Crystal.

I would add a Parental Warning Advisory, but only to the first poem.

A Love Affair (15:53min)

Broadband: A Love Affair

Dial-up: A Love Affair