Monday, March 10, 2008

Days of Tears and Laughter

It passed, on the 7th, another year. By not telling, it was easier. My birthday and Christmas are the 2 days I miss my father most and so there is grieving. Only now I allow myself time to miss, to lament, to offer remembrance and praise, to understand perhaps a little more of the mysterious universe each time I enter sorrow, its spirals of loss and redemption, of endings and continuance, of knowing what is gone and what is to come. I offer myself time to remember, to feel instead of the denial I lived for years and which caused unexpressed despair on 'my day' and the day of festive giving. With recognition of the depth underlying these two days, allowing grieving, they are much happier, take on a glow of warmth and love, a radiance that they lacked when I was hiding sadness under a veneer of gloss. Oh, perhaps a half hour alone to weep, to be in the place of dissembling, of loss, of the irrationality of death, then the rest of the day is lighter - fun, joy, sparkle, and laughter.

Which it was, along with the chocolate truffle chocolate mousse chocolate cream cheese cake from Decadent Desserts and the company of my son and some fine white wine...

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

The Green Wire Shelf

It's a rickety wire corner piece with soldered leaves trailing in green over which I hung a couple of strands of small white festive lights. It fits in the tiny corner of the tiny room. The bottom shelf has a few scattered printed poems that I read into his voicemail, not that he should be the only one to receive them, and you should know that, and manuals for the Tivoli stereo and radio and the Bang & Olufson headphones; the middle shelf holds a refurbished black plug-in Northern Telecom phone with good unfuzzy sound, real retro; the top shelf, a small stack of articles and art books on Botticelli.

When I meditate I unplug the lights, and after lie down and close my eyes and let the silence take me deeper, when I come up from the depths I roll over and place the jack of the lights into the plug on the middle shelf, the one with the retro phone.

Oh, the books have fallen a few times. I know I should have fixed the wobbly wire garden corner shelf to the wall but I didn't have a large picture hook and the store I went to didn't have that size.

Of course it happened. The books tumbled and rolled and fell onto my head in the dark while I was trying to attach the plugs for the small trellis of lights.

I was stabbed by the hardcover corner of my favourite one, the prints are so lush, and I stare at them in the evenings wondering how the Renaissance master painted them.

I have a bruise on my right cheek bone. It's pale grey, and slightly sore. I cover it in a little tinted moisturizer.

My Botticelli bruise.

Monday, March 03, 2008


frozen seas
currents
hot and cold
intermixing
where Venus
wrapped in shawls
of frost
treachery of winds
is this cold
reception
poetry
in the world?

Sunday, March 02, 2008

a la scallope

innocent and lyrically sensuous, fragile, beauty,
powerful goddess and untouched maiden, a blossom

of love

figure of spiritual ecstasy

incarnation of love under a paintbrush, in a vision, a feeling, expansive,
a Botticelli pink rose, Venus in her purity, born from the seafoam, coming into
being, music to ears that hear the seawinds bearing her
towards us

Friday, February 29, 2008

Ocean of Ice

Ice floes, sharp, jagged icicles. Hidden, floating icebergs. Tearing, sinking, drowning. We struggle amid snow squalls and tears of fire burn our cheeks. It's a dance of avoidance in the avalanche of the Arctic waters. Do not freeze, or turn to ice.

Ice moves quickly, unpredictably, in response to ocean currents and wind. Ice, like tectonic plates. Frozen earthquakes and ice mountains, ridges and blocky ice rubble. O be wary, what impales the heart, tides of ice.

Ice floes surge and spin, ice moves in packs, networks of cracks and patches of open water, pushing broken ice, loose chunks of ice, and ice jams. Icebreaking.

But the currents are intermixed in this strange painting of love, surging warmth and rigid cold. Where deceptions occur: what looks solid, isn't. And then the ice so thin it's a mirror down into the depths.

Venus comes aloft on her scallop seashell amidst the ice floes; the Zephyr winds are cold and northerly. The Horae await with a cloak embossed with delicately beautiful ice flowers, as fragile as morning frost. Where is the warmth? The sea is awash with cold and hot waters, whitecaps of ice or steam. Which currents are to be trusted?

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Sun-washed Blossoms

Ishtar's high priestess, Inanna, queen of heaven and earth, of the rising and setting star in the East, Venus, sexual mystery of the darkness, not the sun-stroked beauty of Botticelli's.

Unclothed, unashamed but virginal, an untouched goddess of love blown in by waves whose whitecaps are like flocks of flying white birds. Botticell's Venus not the sensual 'come-hither' of Inanna and her Shepherd-King, Dumuzi. Or she of the Song of Songs.

Botticelli's Venus is the Virgin in a pagan landscape of delight in the beauty of the world. Fragile becoming on the wind-washed shores of our being. Her beauty not lustful but ethereal; the innocence of unblemmished spirituality.

Only, Botticelli, man who remained like a monk, single, dedicated to art, and art alone, your gorgeous muse causes all of Nature to bloom in your paintings where it bursts out of your canvases, the Birth of Venus and the Primavera.

Where is the sultry goddess of the dark gleaming gold temple of love?

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Valentines Day


Those of you who have been reading my latest series of poems will understand the humour in this image, I say laughing. You never know where she will appear! Happy Valentines!

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Temple of Love



Venus, star in the night. Love in the darkness. Your breath. Ecstasies of the body, erotic touch. This temple, its sacred creativities.

O, the goddess of love awaits, inviting. Sighing, and moans. The gleam of the god of war, his helmet golden red in the night.

When Anteros - god of requited love, "love returned," and the avenger of scorned love - came, wings beating like heartbeats, you knew me. For the first time. Anteros, brother of Eros, god of lust, love, erotic union.

Fire gleams in your eyes, volcanic. You didn't see me before though you had known me a long time. I was hidden in your life.

I'm tired of restrictions. Let's change what we have meant to each other. Like angels lying in a bouffant of chocolate and roses. The convergences on the public holy day of love, Valentine's.

Great art presents itself as presence in the world, alive, shimmering.

What the heart holds, for it prefers secrecy.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

birth of beauty

times of decrease, recession, turmoil, depression, upheaval, war, loss and degradation, fear and grief, the unpardonable, what can't be retracted, the birth of love borne by beauty on the waves of the sea

Savonarola's body burnt in the Piazza della Signoria, it is 1498, he who convinced you to renounce the sensual pleasure of beauty - The Mystical Nativity painted in 1500 so different to when

you and Leonardo da Vinci, a friend who you studied with in Verrocchio's workshop in the 1470s

those angelic visions

art historians speak of spiritual tautness in your work, of the grace of line and that your figures are holy heiroglyphics

she appeared under your delicate sable brushes in 1492 and disappeared for centuries until the Pre-Raphaelites resurrected her and now she is a definer of feminine beauty in the modern world

with my curls, when I was a young woman, people used to compare me to 'Botticell's Venus'; I, too, have borne her...

rising from the sea

the rush of waves in my ears

listening to you


beauty, fragile, on the lip of, edges, knowing loss's inevitability, a flower blossoms, fragrant perfume and soft vivid colour of petal drifting away, it can't remain, you knew, Sandro, and

yet, she is, borne by the Zephyr on the scallop-shell and wrapped in veils of flowers by the Horae

washes of colour, seaspray of roses,

translucent robes

poetry we weave ourselves with

Monday, February 04, 2008

Divine Message of Beauty in the World

I write on vellum with sea-scalloped edges.

Birth blueness is everywhere, that particular nascent colour.

You bring the simplicity of writing with you.

While I wear a cloak of flowers, a shower of roses, lyrical, fragile birth, beauty, this flowing cape of words

That the goddesses of the seasons have woven for us.

___________
Botticelli's Birth of Venus hangs in the Uffizi, in Florence. It was painted in 1485.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Oceanic



If I knew how. The swirl-over. In the bank's marble concourse, the ocean wraps you in its currents. We are never far from sea-salt, the briny wind, even inland.

The gentle breezes, long before Sandro, before she came gliding on the fan-shaped scallop sea-shell under his paintbrush.

Before we clothed her with poetry.

The birth of love in the world.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Veils to clothe Boticelli's Venus with

A poem arises catching the energy, imparting meaning, hestitatingly, 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.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Drumbeat

The palm drops
on the inside
of the skin
animal drumming
beating on the drum
drumbeating the night
beating on the eardrum
drum drumming deeply
drawing the heartbeat drumbeat.

My body is the drumbeat
drumbeating my skin
sweating, hot,
drumbeating my body's
percussion, rub, snare,
pounding, colliding of
musical pulses
lyrical sinewy
or staccato modern
or wild shamanic
hair flying
free.

Red shiny satin clinging,
wet
sweat.

The djembe hip bag that I scrubbed, suede dyed to emulate Holstein cow naugahyde, in black and cream, with a wild boar bristle brush and saddle soap because of the dark streaks, smells of animal hide.

I hold it to my nose, and smell. Animal. Hide.
The drumming of the jungle.
An animal skin.

Taut.

Primal beat bounding
resonating, resounding.

You gaze at me, though you haven't looked at me.

I am in your gaze without your seeing me.

It is my hunger you remember feeding,
that you want to feed.
Our heat burns hotly.

Drumbeating
the rhythms beating in us,
the African djembes
dance us.

__________________________
Lately I've been dancing to fabulous drumming. I'd like to thank the drummers at Toronto Tam Tam at Xing Dance Theatre, Shara Claire at 5Rhythms™, Gary Diggins, and Kwanza Msingwana at Tribal at Dovercourt House in Toronto, all in the last 3 weeks.

As a lyrical poet, I use the I-Thou relationship often in my writing. The "you" is a muse and doesn't refer to anyone in particular...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

The Walker...

I passed her in the alley on the way home, large, in clogs without any socks, grey hair dyed blonde, the rain turning to snow with a wind rising, cold, gingerly braving the asphalt, hanging onto her walker, out, exercising, steps barely felt by numb feet and legs but each touch of the ground and forward motion an accomplishment. We crossed the road. Opening my door, the dog ran out and greeted her, which lit her face up. But where the pavement curved to meet the drain she fell. Sideways, on her hip. After assuring us she was fine, a neighbour and I lifted her to her feet. The ambulance was already flashing behind us. "I'm fine, I'm fine, thank you." I placed her purse on her walker and she began her slow step forward. Her hands couldn't grip the walker, it was uneven, the ground, and she fell again. The snow falling on bare skin, I pulled her top down, a small dignity, as the paramedics came and spoke to her and then lifted her and gently took her into the ambulance... perhaps diabetes, I didn't ask, only blessed her and wished her well and waved good-bye, and then came and wrote this, a sketch to remember her by.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

My daughter's photos of moi...



Photos on the blog are one way I keep track of myself, I suppose. The composite shot happily imbibing from a usually-packed away Waterford crystal wine glass that's one of the few remaining from the gift they were 30 years ago was taken in December on my daughter's birthday by her with her new camera. The Krishna-blue lady was also taken then, as a black and white photo and don't ask how I managed to colour it so, call it an act of 'soul force' through Photoshop, the path of filters and colorations I have forgotten. I'm not sure if I've shown it to her, but I like the blue skin and hair of fire... creative collaboration, of sorts.




A little self-portrait reflected-in-the-mirror from September. The thing is that top is a danceskin and my legs were bare and so I had to paint in a dress -you know how it is... :-)

Back to regular programming shortly...

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Rising from the Green Ashes

Needles follow the crinoline green tree like a wake as it is dragged out, on this day of unseasonable warmth and a rain that is barely more than mist. I know now. Comprehending in its enormity.

A criss-cross of green needles on the floor, over the carpets, down the stairs, so profuse the woods are overtaking. They crackle underfoot. They exude the intoxicating aroma of the resins of pine trees.

Were there lightly brown brushed earth and a firepit of dancing flames and a wide-starred sky. In the moment that the place buried in the core of the city turned into wilderness you came, and stayed. With your wild-boar ways, your genteel touch. We all wore our hiking boots in the small enclosure because the green was growing. We found half a red bird, shorn wing, lying, torn from the tree, while the other half flew around the room alighting on the couch or desk at whim, a red decoration, a whirling flame. Today was Epiphany, and it surprised us.

When you let the green in your veins flow instead of blue, verdant, fecund, rich. When we find the wilderness within the endless procession of us, passing by, layers upon layers of meanings, fluxes, the city crowds, where the wild where the red-feathered bird is whole, and sings like any decent phoenix.

I expect you to rise from the green ashes.

Is that tree tinsel, glittery, like pyrite? Be wary, the city offers satiations, pleasures, whatever you want. Is that what you're searching for? With obsessional focus? The tracks, pine needles stuck to your boots, falling off as you go, that I follow deep into the wilderness of your mind, where you dwell in loneliness mining yourself.

Monday, December 31, 2007

Spinning into a New Year with many beautiful wishes...

Sometimes sameness stretches in every direction and the days open and close like readings of the book of your life that you expect, and nothing shifts even if you ache for it. Other times the sheathes of pages of days open at alarming rates and you barely understand what's happening, let alone 'get a reading' on where, what, how, when, or why.

This festive season and as we make our way into another spiralling year, the latter rather than the former predominates in my life. Sorry if I've been absent, a family crisis has created shifting and buckling and reconfigurations... and both of my beautiful children are by their choice now living with me.

Wishing you all a great year ahead, loving, warm, successful, and especially feeling good about mostly everything, yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, work, health, finances, art, the whole marvelous and spinning wonder.

Remember there is nothing, ultimately, but our love for each other.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Solstice Greetings

Solstice Greeting 2007

The very best wishes of the festive season
and a bright and happy New Year~

love Brenda

(embedded image of the sun from SOHO, taken today)

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Air Singing Words

It'll return differently. My inaudible voice. The leaves of the Poinsettia are indistinguishable, except for their colour. Hidden stamens in a red enfolded heart.

Voiceless, I spoke. The unheard words. Deep pressure of language pushing at my throat.

The man who couldn't speak came. I heard words that aren't spoken.

The chords couldn't vibrate in my vocal folds. A laryngitis, inflamed, swollen larynx, a temporary absence of speaking. The air from my breath couldn't sing on my words.

Uttering inaudible, squeaky synechdotes of words, charades, finding sign languages. Or forcing articulated sound through. What shapes into words that string their sentences over the landscape of plants and carpets. I enjoy the silence, resting in soundlessness.

My tongue, lips and mouth pantomime sultry words, my dear, but you can't hear. Listen for resonances. In the silk of the red Poinsettia blouse that I wear. And the tinsel of the season, green and red globes where we are reflected, cherry and gold ribbons tied into bows, sparkling prisms hanging from green pines, strings of lights lit, teasing at what's unsaid.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Hubris before the Flu Gods

Hubris, that's it. For boasting that I hadn't been sick in three years. For many people, such a length of time sounds good, even if I had a bad bout of bronchitis back then, in January 2005, and was bedridden for 3 weeks. It was just after the tragic tsunami struck the countries of the Indian Ocean. I wrote a poem during that illness, lying in my bed in Vancouver.

And not a sniffle since then.

Until this week. And how quickly it developed into laryngitis! It's punishment for yelling. Whenever I do, I suppose.

Hubris and Punishment. And they sprayed Lysol around me at work, laughing, after the coughing spell, after I tried to eat my hot chili pepper spiced stew, after which I lost my voice. It's fun losing your voice when you know it's the punishment for the hubris of boasting before the Gods of the Flu.

Can't say I'm enjoying it too much though.

So I slugged codeine-laced cough syrup for the rest of the afternoon and no longer cared.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Solstice's coming...

fields of light-e

Taken with the Sony DSC-W55 Digital Camera that I bought for my daughter's birthday recently. Quite different to the cell phone camera's shot. The words of the little poem there I don't think have the quality of being born out of this image...

Ma Doggie















The bug that's going around caught me, sore throat, coughing a bit, etc., first cold in 3 years, time for sure, so posting a little pic of ma doggie taken on Saturday morning...while I was talking to ma son on the telephone while ma daughter was out getting us something to eat. That was before the blizzard. And before I came out from my shadow, though that's another story. I'm not a good sick person - I don't like getting sick! Grumble grumble. Back ta bed wit' ya! Rest the best medicine. xo

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Blizzard in Toronto

It's heavily snowing, you'd be ice-encrusted in minutes, and blowing, and as the ground rose whitely through the day even thunder and lightning struck from the billowy sky. Not a day to be out, and I went grocery shopping with my little red basket and bought far too much and purchased a luggage rack and was tormented by heaps of snow which dragged my little basket this way and that waiting for buses and walking the short route home after the subway ride; the snow, a light and beautiful cascade from above, became impassable white heaps of resistant solidity on the ground. If you fall into snow, it closes around you fast and becomes like cement, I remember that from an article on avalanches.

A blizzard. Predicted to be the coldest Winter ever having begun. Snow crews out in force tonight.

How many angels on the way home stopped to help me? Such gallantry, men and women. 'Do you need help?' 'Yes... thank you.' Me, who is stubbornly independent had to admit I couldn't carry my load. Why'd I buy more than I could carry? Why didn't I know the snow would render my wheels useless? How could we not chuckle, the helping angels and I. And how many blessings did I give?

Someone set out to film cold, uncaring Torontonians, and found us rather the opposite. We generally go out of our way to help each other.

Toronto friendliness is something I missed when I moved away. It was so good to come home to. With my badly constructed, over-full, precariously swinging basket and its ridiculously attached wheels, oh even the blizzarding snow must have laughed at me, I received much appreciated warmth from the people of this city today.

Friday, December 14, 2007

fields of light



_______________
Click for larger size. There is so little time for the hours a photopoem takes that surely it's not quite, but then maybe. On the other hand, the next day now, I see the colours are not so good - it was taken with the camera on my phone & maybe should re-do with a better camera. The little poem is also part of a larger stream of thoughts that I recorded during meditation and which drifted into the strangeness of time. The clustering of molecules and why motion and life/birth/death occurs. Oh, and then how our solar system's magnetic field is warped, asymmetrical, which was in the news. And then I thought, maybe time is issued forth from the great burning fields of the sun itself. And I saw photos of sun spots that were so large the entire earth could fall into them. And how close-up images of the sun resemble Van Gogh's last painting, of the wheat fields. That's how the sun's surface looks - like Van Gogh's burning fields of light. And in the movie, Sunshine, how the crew die rapturous deaths in the sun. And how I've always been a worshipper of the light, mystical and real. And it's all intriguing and thus very exciting to me. But to weave it all into a prose poem! Oh, la!

Monday, December 10, 2007

Sign at Computer: Gone Mobile...

Wow! After much research that was, naturally, inconclusive, when I saw the HTC Touch, I succumbed. Almost instantly, but when you're ready, you're ready. I used a Pocket PC for years, so this seemed natural, and I found a good plan, 200 min a month, unlimited local calls after 6pm, unlimited browser, no system access fee, the price of the phone affordable, a 3-year agreement. Oh, so what if the Canadian cell phone market has been de-regulated and prices should drop in 2008, I needed it now. It's time for a new computer and I really would like the new iMac rather than a MacBook and this phone seems an ideal mobile device - tiny, discreet, but with amazing capabilities. So I've been having fun all weekend, between putting up our tree and watching movies on IFC, exploring this little contraption. On which I'm posting now in a coffee shop listening to jazz. Too bad I can't get up and boogie!

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Burning Brightly in the Night

Because this poem is under consideration for publication, I have encrypted it so as to keep the comments intact and as something easy for me to find in the great archiver Blogger is.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Vishnu on Chinese New Year

blue lines, watchers, boxes

.......................martial arts
a whole room jumping, jabbing
kicking, cutting air

falling gold bands

then the red

......vision, blood, shirts on the backs of

floating discs, cut, fresh green

.....eyes that see
...................everything

horizontal lines raised

red banners, orange tigers

blue bricks, pink band, luminous
candles, prison

control your destiny


labyrinth, blue-black hair
smoke, the floor disappears

a dragon of virtue

immensity of primordial waters

jump from stone to stone


on the ying-yang, muscles flying

bells

opening of the passage
incense, the moon


the hooded men
striped tigers, white satin

red dragon
blue god

entryway to the past
.......................opens

......create the future


Vishnu Visvarupa

Vishnu Visvarupa, Preserver of the Universe, Represented as the Whole World | Unknown
19th century | watercolor on paper | 15 1/4x 11 in/38.7 x 28cm |Victoria & Albert Museum, London UK

A Pulsing Imagination - Ray Clews' Paintings

A video of some of my late brother Ray's paintings and poems I wrote for them. Direct link: https://youtu.be/V8iZyORoU9E ___