Still Life

I would never have left, that's how it was.

But I am shifted into the expanse of light.

There's no attitude I can think of to express this.

The streets are busy, and I walk them, Spring warmth. I can't say if it's love. It's very strange to be here, where it's incipient.

I'm not sure how we stay together when we do, or how we fall away from each other.

There are many ways of being. It's pointless to talk about singular, unitary things. Fluxes and flows. There is a trajectory, though. That's what's most surprising after many years. A path in the pathlessness.

I don't know how I ended up there, or why it was over. Or why we never spoke. Or why there was a significant effect anyhow.

It makes me aware that most of life goes on under the surface.

Which is strange, when the pathways map these routes to and fro.

Nothing was stable, but everything remained as it was, only more so.

I don't mean to sound vague. All the things I thought weren't close to what was unfolding in the underground ways that it was. We didn't understand, but we knew this had to be.

I can't fathom a design, but perhaps there is one in an absent fashion.

An inner directive.

Of which we're hardly conscious, except in retrospect.

Nothing stays still.

Adrift

Out of the fertility of the ocean, sea tides within, rhythms following the moon's wake, I sought you.

My planet of fire.

You'd disappeared into steaming mist. I lost you in the clouds. Perhaps you'd transformed into the raptor flying overhead. Or the dark loam of the shore looming.

You were always only figments,
imagined.

Pink roses
falling in the wind.

What could be fired her desire, kept her enthralled. Only now she sees what is.

For love is beautiful and painful, this is its nature. "A great love carries within it a mourning for love." [Edmund Jacobs.]

The way the processes of love unite what is disparate, the longings and communions, and hold us to our wanton paths amidst the fluxes of the heart.

Venus
adrift...

Hidden Masterpieces

Botticelli's Venus
like pure meditation.

Sky and sea and shell.

Fabric of wind blowing.

Is she a heliotropic metaphor, painted by a man whose preference wasn't women, who presented an idealized version of woman without her dark burning orchard?

No contrary opposing forces
dark intrigues, smoldering
passions
erupting
like the fire rock
that buried Pompeii.

Nor is she a poetry of free association, drifting over the waves opening out towards non-meaning but fully signified: beauty, love, goddess.

She doesn't point us to the conflict of the unrepresentable, but to a representation of
beauty, a solar vision, of innocence, of love.

Botticelli's Venus carries no arrows, or armory.

A surface of
sweetness
idyllic.

No lusty, passionate,
vengeful goddess.

Appearing fragiley
on the ocean's
horizon.

Thin layers of translucent
paint.

The Birth of Venus and the Primavera kept from public view for almost five centuries, and then she rose like the morning star, radiating feminine beauty far and wide.

Pallas & the Centaur, Primavera, and The Birth of Venus commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de'Medici in the late 1400s for his Villa di Castello in Florence.

Secret, hidden masterpieces. Not seen by the public until the 19th century.


Venus, the spiritual birth of Humanitas.

Lofty ideal. Hunger of hot desire
absent.

The messiness of reality
can't be faked.

"the soul establishes itself
through loving itself in the ideal"¹

______________________
¹ Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love (Columbia University Press, 1987), 110.

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.

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

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?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Lights in the Pre-Dawn

encrypted first draft of a prose poem

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.

Encrypted poem.

Magnolia Stellata

A desolation out of which writing comes. An emptiness of words. The streets are dark as I walk. Perhaps love is not fullness but the absence itself.

'Despair....invokes beauty only to pour the void into it. The emptiness of the soul is so vast, its cruel advance so inexorable, that any resistance to it is impossible. What would be left of paradise if it were seen from the viewpoint of despair? A graveyard of happiness.' E.M. Cioran, Tears & Saints.

We cannot merge. Are we are in love with each other's absence? Our holy madness is our love, founded on renunciation.

I am emptied in my love for you. I have no desire to possess you - desire emphasizes lack. Even in this violent wrenching towards each other where we are alienated and jubilatory. When we are empty of ourselves we take joy in the sweetness of the other.

If I could tell you a story, I would. There are no avenues of magnolia trees here, though I wish there were.

'Loneliness means I am at last whole.

Only with him could I be lonely. Open up to him. Completely open, completely for him. Welcome him completely into myself. Surround him with the labyrinth of shared happiness. I know it is you.' Peter Handke, Wings of Desire.

I am alone with he who is alone. Seul á seul.

I'm looking for the essence
that I can drop on my tongue,
until I am suffused with the
scent. Until my kisses are
magnolia,
........soft white petals of perfume.

Imagine the magnolia trees where Venus is born aloft on the shell blown by Zephyr.

Where writing comes to an end and sinks into its
emptiness.

Only then.

Arias in the Wind

A woman singing arias on a high platform on a truck parked on a cold and windy November day. Her voice flowing with the gusts keeps becoming obscure, becoming wind. Will she fly turning through the air like a Chagall angel, lift and float in the lightness of being?

You haunt me. Is it that we fly together where it mingles, rebounding off each other, an undulating pattern of togetherness that's different to the separateness that's ongoing?

Who are you as the hours unfold across the tableau of time? When do you come bounding from that sky of vivid pastel colours?

This coalesquing of ours in various patterns and never stopping and always moving and reconfiguring, our agile dance across the expanse.

Daylight Shifting

I woke, and found the hour returned for revision. End of daylight savings, an hour that repeats itself: from 2am to 3am, and then back to 2am again.

That re-lived hour changed everything.

Take both forks in the road. Try alternatives, side by side. I lived the first hour trapped, obsessed; then went a different way when the hour started again. In the dark hours, a resolution to the dilemma, and I became free in a new way.

Or explore it multiply round-the-clock & superimpose the hours until time is like Comet Holmes expanding.

All day I re-live each of the hours when I pass clocks, the large blue-rimmed one that ticks loudly on the kitchen wall, the yellow-lit numbers on the stove, the travel clock on the bathroom shelf amidst coloured stones strewn around a conch shell, my electric bedside clock with its red LCD numbers, and my tiny silver watch, some are changed, and some aren't, absurdly I like it like that, playing with time, repeating each hour.

I envision changing my watch on the subway platform in the morning, stale underground air, crowded, turning the dial and watching the hands unweave the forever spiralling forward of time.

Today, the 25 hour day, when time repeats itself in the shift towards the light.

O Halloween!

Overheard on the streets on Halloween party night, "Every vampire is a f----ing Goth." Goth is the Undead. Rah!

Making my way through the crypt-white skin and deathly black lips, hair, eyes, nails and clothes of vamps combing the streets looking for treats, I look up and see clouds looking like bruised blood in the sky, with a faint purple tinge over by sunset.

Black silhouetted trees are torn of their leaves by ravaging winds,
shadowy fat leaves fly like bats over the streets.

The clouds broil and the rain comes in,
a fierce spitting snake sliding across the sky.

Ghouls unite! It's time for Gothic Romance
or Zombie Undead Heaven!

Later I walk somnambulantly through the night after my howling dog, and see a bank of dense black cloud moving under the whitest of moons, which sheds light on the upper ridge of the clouds so it's like a stripe rolling along a great skunk.

It's eerie to see the world projecting itself in animal forms.

It must be the influence of those ancient Celts and their (listen for the wail) Halloween.

___________
Really, dear Readers, every word is true! Whooo.