Unrecalled Dreams

Walking through ancient corridors
over rickety bridges
behind new moon shadows

Singing atonal melodies
without breathing

Collapsing umbrella fantasies

Stranded on the edge
of a sand grain
without any salt

Drenched by your wordless rhymes
in my unrecalled dreams
as a cricket gasps

A tiny black kitten
with white paws
and a tiny white tufted ascot
who mews in the softest voice
scampers over to me every night
so that its owner raises a fuss
as it nuzzles into my lap

I hear my dead mother's voice
in the haunted river willow
awaiting the hand of cancer's taut grasp

Ekphrasis Exercise

"Poetry and painting (or any visual art) have long been considered to be 'sister' arts, each in their own way offering a similar means to re-envision or re-experience the world. Moreover, poets and painters have long served as sources of mutual inspiration; a poet in search of 'images' can find an almost limitless supply within the vivid, concrete and evocative 'language(s)' of painting." - Steve Salmoni.

I am going to provide a few examples of Ekphrasis from my own attempts at interpreting the visual artistry of painters in my own poetry.

Paris through the Window, Marc Chagall

Paris through the Window

An open-mouthed, human-faced feline
sits, perched on a ledge in the city of lights,
gazing, aghast at the developing scene
which a two-faced man - half full of the blues
offering an unclaimed heart in his hand
to no one in particular, half looking away,
smiling past the borderland of existence -
fails to notice. Rising from the bodies
of a well dressed couple (every man and all woman)
laying limp and lifeless, the Eiffel Tower
glints and gleams in the illumination
of bright and colorful searchlights, a stoic and
staid edifice of emotionless steel. Unflinching,
a man parachutes down to lifeless humanity.
An empty chair reposes at the table next
to the double-faced Parisian Janus, who guards
the open, glass-paned, sliding doorwindow,
permitting an invisible breeze to refresh
the flower arrangement adorning
the empty table of the man’s solitary blues.

The Birthday, Marc Chagall

The Birthday

A tapestry on the wall of moments,
near a bed, empty in its non-union,
colors the drab plaster of existence
with whimsy, a woman’s tiptoes
strain as she reaches for a contorted
body of her ghost-man bending over
backwards, his pallid lips meet her
rosy kiss by the open window, paned
overlook onto the city, as the universal
clock points out the instant, surprise
shines through her open eyes, his dead
gaze through closed eyes blinds him
to her, and he armlessly offers an empty
embrace as a bouquet in her hands thirsts
for the limbs which blossomed them.


Composition #7, Walter Kandinsky

Composition #7

shout run lightning scream fast blown
technicolor yawn crystalline cloud shards
fragment alluring anniversary helmets
arrowhead rocking chair filtered warble smear
canoe sunnyside up sprocket wheeled wheedle
hurled curls reflection wild cityscape slab
madness cacophony nightmare seasonless
hurricane rainbow lamp strawhat duck sled
potpourri insect disjointed connection furious
fractured slithering inverted freeform dove.


The Old Guitarist, Pablo Picasso

The Old Guitarist

The crumpled figure of aging poverty –
an old man seen through the tint
of bluesy tones, his clothing tattered
and torn, a holy adornment – on a cross-legged
cement sidewalk, leans against the wall
eyes closed to the silent, desolate and absent
audience surrounding him - and he strums
and sings of the destitution in the stark
and barren landscape of his unfulfilled
dreams, the under-appreciation of his soul.

The Queen of Atlantis

Come with me through
the mirror into which I peer,
a reflection of the past revealing
the future, to the legend
which spawned all legends
and reveals the dream of all dreams,
to fair Atlantis, and be the queen

of tomorrow as you radiate the light
from the Lady of all ladies,
the light of the Queen of Atlantis.

Clouds drift beyond the horizon
carrying harmonized chorales
who cry to the ancient oceans;
Sewn silver seeds wait to sprout
from the plowed rows. Cover
them over with the finest
Chinese silk, woven by Empress
Lei Zu from the most delicate
mulberry silkworm cocoons.
The parting clouds reveal
Luna’s countenance as
the seeds germinate
into the sublime hopes
of antediluvian prophesies.

Plato never foresaw
a utopia of nowhere
quite so somewhere.

When one heart whispers
to another, the seas freeze still
in abeyance, the winds caress
the words, lightning brilliantly
illuminates the thunderless
pulse, all swords rust
into dust, ploughshares
carve harvests out of deserts,
and the one certain truth
in the universe echoes
from the highest Himalayan
peak: a rose without thorns.

Venga conmigo
a través del espejo que observo
el reflejo del pasado,
que revela el futuro,
a la leyenda que dio lugar
a todas leyendas,
y que revela
el sueño de todos los sueños,
a la serena Atlántida,
y sea la reina de la mañana,
mientras que irradiando la luz
de la Dama
de todas las damas,
la luz de la Reina de Atlántida.