#impressionism
Thousands lie in rows, for years,
Brewing with impressionistic tastes,
Making their debuts all the time,
Or are they clinking and rolling out, until
A poster is discoloured down the range, or
Someone's back painted red.
But in honesty, I don't get what you mean here.
Because while
It's true I'm ageing a little slow for my liking,
I'm not sobering up, yet I wasn't drunk to start,
Yes, I'm being a little too selfish,
And I guess I have played paintball before,
You see
I don't seem to need to hit the metaphor,
Or play on words, or wonder,
Any more.
Will I be able to wander as I get older? Either I'll mull myself to senility, or maybe I'll get a hole in my foot.
Dec 8, 2024
Dec 8, 2024 at 10:32 AM UTC
minaret, matte in haze
an illusion of detail
you, Impressionism
your bricks clasp each other
intricately, intimately
without hesitation or sense
lips of red and suave craft
tilt:
pyre suddenly
I step back
I can fathom you
from here only
Jan 4, 2023
Jan 4, 2023 at 2:02 PM UTC
Three poplars grow along the river bank,
Three poplars reflected in the current,
Past is paint and the future is a blank
Canvas framed with poplar wood recurrent,
Reeds sway silently,
Tree trunks climb crooked,
Colors blur like smoky clouds unfurling
Colors blurring cloudy smoke rings spread
Across a pastel sky. Autumnal swirl
in kingly golden glow—presages:
Brush be quick / the sun dips / the light changes
Capture it before it rearranges!
Sep 21, 2020
Sep 21, 2020 at 10:57 AM UTC
Its eighteen months since her delivery
Now she is penning odes ostensibly
Crayons in both hands: she is standing tall
What Dada says? "No writing on the wall."
With great care baby writes her graffiti
Not much untouched by her audacity
He tries to compromise with a new book
but baby says, "Daa Daa"; with a stern look
He has to admit the walls are hers now
Filled with scribbles and a chromatic cow
Its her version of Van Gogh's Starry Night
without the stars; a novice oversight
She's more surreal than Salvador Dali
The writing's on my wall: Pure Graffiti
Dec 11, 2019
Dec 11, 2019 at 4:38 PM UTC
Sometimes you can hear not with ears, but with a skin: with your fingers on fabric, with your hair sinking thought the palms, with your muscles on anxious joints.
Sometimes you can hear not the music, but emotions. Words, voices, harmony, rhythm, — all of them are spiralling into one multidimensional Rubik's Cube; all of them are thickening into a rich hodgepodge of colours; and then you can’t understand if the drums are ringing inside of your brains or if the song itself is closing its eyes with joy.
Sometimes you can hear nothing.
And nothing can sometimes hear you.
Today you hear winter.
Being on the ground floor it’d be like being outside.
Your elbows are on a windowsill. Your droopy eyes are chained to a sleepy late-night path.
You are therefore one short step from that path: just breathe and touch the earth with your cosy socks. The earth is chubby because of yesterday’s raindrops.
Smells like roaring lorry. Hears like water and warm winter.
The colour palette is in shades of a half past four morning.
On the opposite side of your street your neighbour still keeps Christmas: the garland made of white-blue lights flickers during four finger taps, and is lit during three. One-two-three-four, one-two-three. You can almost hear ‘Fantaisie Impromptu’ by Chopin. Right. Four. Left. Three.
That white-blue trembling sneaks into puddles along with the low smiles of lanterns further down the block. The blue glow is dancing, the copper illumination is dearer.
The cat runs — grey mouse — grey stain — on the canvas.
The windows are like card backs in Tarot spread on the walls like on the tables.
The windows are mirrors, and the mirrors are caves.
The windows run with perspective.
With the cat.
Tell us, sky! Do you exist? Have you been always franking us? Both on the left, both on the right one cannot find a difference. Your colour is lullabying.
Your colour is dual; at first glance it’s pure blue-plum gouache, but looking closely… The sky is scarlet. Scarlet as a wisp of a tapestry.
The scarpestry breaks through plumouache.
Suddenly a little white twinkle hops into winter, and suddenly dies.
Your heart has grown to your tongue root and to your little alcove under your ribs, and the heart is writing-writing-writing, and is escorting passing cars, and is fuming-fuming-fuming, and is sweating like in a sauna.
It’s dribbling outside.
Homely.
Nothingly.
Nov 5, 2019
Nov 5, 2019 at 12:33 PM UTC
At fortnight it awakes and grows
It runs between a shoe and toes
It hisses, rustles, up it goes
And resonates
It softly comes, it quietly leaves
Behind a knot one can unweave
In hundred ways
The mist that falls upon the lawn
On summer days
Then, in the hour before the dawn
It resonates
Its tongue is pretty poor for words
It speaks instead in subtle chords
No one can play
There, in the shades, black, blue and green
There, in the cut between the scenes
There, where it hardly can be seen
It resonates
Mar 26, 2019
Mar 26, 2019 at 12:35 PM UTC
Nothing but a forlorn pain
Phantoms of art
Snake charmers
Larva tamers
“Free Me from the sun”
Helicopter steed
Blaring Gjallarhorn
Crystalline ammunition
Shrub-like heads
Civilian militants
Snake charmers, take my hands
Sting them once again
Render me strong and heartless
Tend to my obsidian horn
It grows longer as the sun subsides
Blood on the papers
Christened for television
Whitened crusade
Negotiation for control
Count your blessings
Arm the hangars
Send the reserves
Whip the cavalry
Watch the nation
Watch them bleed again
Dec 11, 2018
Dec 11, 2018 at 8:21 PM UTC
On the evening of August 6th
The body is separated, eviscerated
Stone walls
Lost thralls
A family takes their evening stroll
And finds themselves imprisoned
Their umbilical cord, cut down the half
Microwave oven
Searing monsoon shower
Vagrant feet are shackled
Eyes are blinded with exhaust pipes
The East is not allowed to cry alone
Decay, wail on
Wail on
Contain us
Dear Marcus, free me
From these Pyrrhic victories
Clean this dusky mall
I feel safe under phosphoric lights
Guerillas swing on electric wires
Transatlantic conversations
Acquired on paper
Perverse
Desecrated
Red cloth seizes everything
Stray, running felines
The impassioned, waving flag
Kept in a velvet pocket
Stay here, stay a while
This cold era is a rising draft
The Bermuda Triangle
Quarantined
No more ships crawl along the winded shore
A time capsule
The nation sinks into antiquity
The brink of armageddon
Cusp of oblivion
Crimson hand of eternity
An old, whittled clock
Last minute
Cold Turkey!
God almighty
Peace is never promised
But we may yearn again
Nobody is free
But we are safe for another hour
God almighty
Leases on the lands
Paid in thorns
Nations playing circles
Mr. Versus Mr.
An ever-changing world
Stagnant and tightly oiled
Save this soil
It will cave in silence
The clockmaker sits in the backdrop
Readying her tools
Dec 6, 2018
Dec 6, 2018 at 5:16 PM UTC
They sing from along the path,
lined like torches would, evenly spaced.
A hazy wood surrounds me,
swirling trees and melting hues
of a late summer afternoon,
fiery colors dancing and melding together,
flowing to the next,
cream in a Sunday morning roast.
The colors, the chimes
they illuminate my stumbling journey,
my tottering travel.
I stop and catch a gaping breath,
bent over, panting, and begin to listen.
The wind pushes the trees,
it sounds the chimes colliding ring,
it exists in flux,
rising in singing ascent
and exhaling in a comforting sigh.
Drifting down the path,
I separate and regenerate
With each glitching step forward
my face distorts, rearranges.
What is the source of verse, of thought?
Rehearsal, a precursor who holds us like
a ventriloquist through time, or is it just
a keen ear for your minds own
singing wind chimes?
Jul 10, 2018
Jul 10, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC
W e s t a r t e d f a r a w a y f r o m e a c h o t h er now wehavenowhereelsetogobutruntogether but no o n e r e a l i s e d t h a t w e s h a l l a l w a y s b e d r i f t e r s r u n n i n g t o w a r d w h a t l o ve nextoffers.
Apr 17, 2018
Apr 17, 2018 at 11:55 AM UTC
Arab scarabs
wielding scabbards
staggered with hilts
laid waste to
idle Cherubs in
garments
embroidered
like quilts.
They're off kilter,
with no filter, and
wear stilts where
leaves wilt, sir
please lilt yr
tactless
anachronisms
through fractured
refractive prisms
to help the mind
unbind from
shop, office, and
factory prisons
Listen:
there's a
penitent androgyne,
speaking
sentence in pantomime
as though rhyme
were no longer
a kind of
berated
creative crime: But
who
the
hell
CARES?!?!?!?!
Jan 12, 2018
Jan 12, 2018 at 6:20 AM UTC
It is not some dusty frame,
hanging rusty nails;
chaotic mess.
No es amor solo amar, to you,
just some language you,
can't comprehend.
Distraught, despaired, disheveled,
a dystopian novel notion,
romanticized.
There's no need;
you don't need to patronize.
Cold hand upon cold hand;
lifeless smiles colluding.
And as if you were a Monet sunrise,
my impression of you is that of drunken brush strokes,
dull blues,
and angry orange hues,
Left on display within a rotting, wooden frame.
Apr 9, 2017
Apr 9, 2017 at 6:36 PM UTC
When it's dark in the city,
I like to take off my glasses so that everything blurs together
And I can't tell where the lines start and end.
It's like the world becomes a painting,
One with globs of oil coming off the canvas
And you can make it look like anything you want it to be.
And if I twist my neck around,
I can see everything that I can imagine.
Like one where someone is in love with me and if I don't want blood under my tongue,
There doesn't have to be.
One where I can walk surely and I don't have to take off my glasses to feel safe.
I can touch the halos around the street lamps with my fingertips because of the peaks of paint and I can sleep at night because of the dark sky.
Sometimes you are there and sometimes I am alone and the same painting can mean a million things.
A million beautiful things if I let it.
Jun 28, 2016
Jun 28, 2016 at 9:24 AM UTC
She stands outside my blooming heart
and draws my soul with messy hands
paint mixed with my blood and sweat
blurring all the lines
bending all the rules
And she's not Monet
but she doesn't remember my face anyway
I'm just a shadow in a crowd
and just a paint when we're alone
'cause the sunny afternoon
doesn't last forever
whenever
wherever
the wind will take us away
Mar 3, 2016
Mar 3, 2016 at 2:04 PM UTC
A small skiff drifted in the harbor
guided by the eazy oars of a fisherman
standing in the hull to better view
the shimmering reflection
of the orange circle hovering overhead-
dancing with the gentle waves
in the morning mist.
Monet had to name it something
so he called it what it was:
"Impression, soleil levant."
A critic, wanting poison for his pen,
seized Monet's title to squeeze
a lethal dose into the radical veins
of the artist and his fellows of the gallery
(Renoir, Pissarro, Cezanne).
With scathing indignation
he dubbed the lot of them,
"Mere Impressionists."
The label endures (minus one word)
but how many recall or care to know
the righteous critic's name?
November, 2011
Jul 7, 2015
Jul 7, 2015 at 4:40 AM UTC
Oh woe were I a painter, impressionist in craft
Painting pictures in emotion, instead of photograph
Because there is no color, no brush-stroke I could sweep
That could capture her, or the wonder that she keeps.
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 1:05 AM UTC
I'll be on the front lines
Fighting fireflies on a Golf Course
With a butterfly net
Collecting ghosts in mason jar
to plant back on the cemetery
The crows are making nests
in the skull of your family
They accidentally put
the wrong name on yours
And in Latin!
It's ok though, because you're
(were) Are? a nihilist
The river Nile is the
best stream of consciousness
Known to man and of
Course that's where you drowned
your metaphorical thoughts
While you hung yourself above
a treadmill trying to pretend
you wanted to be a better
man
But you only ran away
The Stonehenge is the front gate
to your home
It's made from
billboards and
Pictures of static
When you're dead you
Live in White Noise
You're turning my lights
on and off
as I'm trying to sleep
haunting me in
my over easy eggs
making the yolk run
in words "Miss me?"
And of course I do
But you are as good a my imaginary friend
When I'm walking in the
park with all the scarecrows
you make the dandelions
float, no amount of
wishes is bringing you back
I know boards of wood are
easier to you than the termites
eating the tumor in my brain
from the insanity you're causing me
So instead I paper mache my
room with love letters from you
that got lost in the mail
because you stole them for me
A banksy bankrupt in original thought
I'm building a tiny forest
of matches
If I can't sleep I'm joining you
So you pack your bags, hobo
style but with
Picnic baskets and dead leaves
Seancing yourself
With the crystal ***** of my eyes
I lost you in some newspaper ad
about a Home for sale
Does it come with a family?
How is that legal?
But I lost you because I bought the wrong copy and couldn't find that one blurry word that was you saying
Good morning
I lost you at sea
And in my dreams
And to your own hands
And to my own memory
I'm dancing with wolves
Called Alzheimer's
because I'll die
with a disease of age
Instead of house burning, building leaping
Front Page
Then we'll go live in abandoned
amusement parks with creaky
Ferris wheels turning
Like you in your grave
And me with the Cycle of Life
Jun 17, 2015
Jun 17, 2015 at 7:34 PM UTC
There's something so sick about
this emotional capacity
Before breakfast we plant atomic bombs in our neighbors yard
like bulbs of (glad)iolus
Haven't you noticed how much gardens look like graveyards
My cereal, ceiling, bathroom, and skin
All say Made in China
This homeland is looking more like that land
Ughhh and you can see the blood in my pink nail polish from that sweat shop girl
It's not supposed to be RED!
ooOooopps did we just learn how to commercialize genocide
I'm wondering when I'll wake up with a barcode
Will it be on my eyelids
my arms my soul
Maybe God was in the bees
And now
Now there's no more honey, flowers, or trees
Just time.
My brothers both went to war
It's not Wal-Mart
But it's open 24/7, checkout through Heaven
And I don't think they're coming home
Not without bones implanted in their brains
sharp, jagged, broken ones
That kind that make you uncomfortable with your memories
The one's that make it hard to sleep
Last week I found a dead cat
A dead bird in the snow
When I turned around the corner, I saw myself
I was lying in the street
Dead, dead
And I felt nothing
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 8:09 PM UTC
Forehead sore, striving to hold my irises unstrained
I see through the rays, red, blue, and white snapping in the wind
Casting flickering shadows upon the women in frocks of lighter pinks and turquoise
Just like that of the channel waters through which my bow cuts cleanly
Rudders portside, ropes knotted on hand
My lady and I dock, a gentleman all in black ready to oblige her graceful hand
Two cheeks dampened with a kiss’ moment later
A glance welcomes the uniform balconies which wrap around curved corners,
Double windows, and modest roofs that mirror extravagant ceilings
Onward we stride to our night time lodging where the dormant flares shall ignite
We celebrate our ought’ve been loss of virtues
And gain of not one golden band, but two
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 6:59 PM UTC