Quotes about searing, page 15
Archer
[concrete/shaped piece- formatting not retained]
In her sights:
the core of nothing made perfect
Erogenous Eris’ golden apple crown
collecting my senses
I am drawn
to fix the unveiling
volatile inviolate
And you’re raising your knees
with painted feather-nails
calling claiming commanding
brushing my quivering quill
stroking swelling
ardor aching
- you are TAKING
me:
pushing pulling
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poem by Randy Resh
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Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing
The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.
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poem by Margaret Atwood
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The Beach Wore Red
A glass camouflage of
Waves hunched upon waves
Sounding the eminent and mortal attack
The sky so blue just the morning before
Rains ashen and gray today
War emits its screams and explosions and death
A tsunami of destruction and terror
Pushing forward those not so brave
Today the beach wore red
A soldier falls up the shore
Grasping a hill of silken bloody sand
A piece of land and then nothing more
Run, run to nowhere and a medic takes his hand
Look for the next place to hide -
Or seek out someone in command
Soldier grits his teeth and crawls -
Trust the buddy system
No one in an Army is abandoned
Chokes back the terror and the dust, presses back his helmet
In a moment can he take another man's life?
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poem by Joyce A Halvorsen
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Stars Birth Labours Into New Light Organic Life
space dark velvet beauty star light sparkling
stars birth labours into new light organic life
primordial soup complex organic chemicals
precursors life birth born in each all new stars
infrared space observatories wonder observe
large organic molecules evolve from chemicals
in cloud-like envelope surrounding some stars
within a mere few thousand years of new birth
watch infrared spectra readings of short-lived
carbon-rich stars engulfed in clouds of gas dust
clouds seeded rich advanced organic molecules
repeatedly detected in outer space young stars
sing times of merriment paradise periods as new
life prospers proliferates complex molecules exist
stars creating new life in conception birth labours
stars birth life easily without difficulty chemicals
eventually ejected into interstellar space journey
out toward cry life planets earth life possibilities
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poem by Terence George Craddock
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Refinement Of A Pot
Refinement of a pot appears effete
if you don’t like irregularities.
Once baked inside a kiln the searing heat
preserves forever angularities
that may be smoothed while it is wet and warm,
yet only when it’s finally been glazed
are faults seen in perspective, in a form
that sometimes tells the viewer: be amazed.
Inspired by Christopher Knight’s review of an exhibition of the pots of the Biloxi potter, George E. Ohr, in the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona (“Pottery with a Modernist twist, ” LA Times, December 26,2007) :
Ohr was a certified eccentric, not least as indicated by the 20-inch mustache he reportedly draped over his ears to keep from getting it tangled in the spinning potter's wheel. But he was nonetheless a gifted journeyman. The son of an Eastern European immigrant blacksmith, he was taught the potter's traditional craft by an Alsatian father-and-son team, first in Biloxi and later in New Orleans.
Ohr learned how to prepare clay, build kilns and manipulate standard glaze formulas. He also spent two years traveling the Midwest and the South examining rival production facilities, to better know the competition. He regularly visited (and sometimes showed his wares at) giant trade shows, such as Chicago's famous 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The souvenirs sold at these fairs, such as the Christopher Columbus coins designed by the preeminent sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens for the Chicago extravaganza, might also have provided inspiration. The Pomona show includes five so-called 'brothel coins' that Ohr made for the Gulf Coast tourist trade. Each small, unglazed clay disk pairs words with a low-relief image to make a verbal-visual rebus: 'I love U' written above a leaping deer; 'let's go 2' above a bed; and other, bawdier couplings. A far cry from Saint-Gaudens' lofty allusion to classical Roman coins, Ohr's comic souvenirs reflected his own oddball character. In a nation uncomfortable with art, being wacky could function as a defensive mechanism - as a wink and a nod that minimized the threat of being taken seriously. With nothing left to lose after his pottery burned to the ground, Ohr unleashed his expert technical skill. Rather than return to producing utilitarian dishes and vases for the home, he began to play with conventional ceramic forms. He began to make art. Pomona is the first stop on a tour prepared by Biloxi's Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art, whose large collection happily survived the brutal assault of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Twenty-eight of the pieces are from the museum's collection, while the rest have been lent by private collections in Mississippi and California.
12/27/07
poem by Gershon Hepner
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On The Wire
O God, take the sun from the sky!
It's burning me, scorching me up.
God, can't You hear my cry?
Water! A poor, little cup!
It's laughing, the cursed sun!
See how it swells and swells
Fierce as a hundred hells!
God, will it never have done?
It's searing the flesh on my bones;
It's beating with hammers red
My eyeballs into my head;
It's parching my very moans.
See! It's the size of the sky,
And the sky is a torrent of fire,
Foaming on me as I lie
Here on the wire . . . the wire. . . .
Of the thousands that wheeze and hum
Heedlessly over my head,
Why can't a bullet come,
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poem by Robert William Service
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Twentieth Century Mariner
All quotations from 'The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner' by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
I oft wondered why
under cold grey overcast;
west coast coastal hometown sky.
I never met a mystic man
with glittering hypnotic inner eye;
whose beard was experience hoar with age.
Who would teach me tiding things
fever pitch, storm tossed, born within me;
inflamed, I needed, sought to know.
For me there was not, could never be,
no third stopped meeting an ‘ancient Mariner’; (1.)
like ‘three years child’ way laid ‘Wedding-Guest’. (15.)
But then where was ‘Storm-Blast’ windswept, (41.)
such fabled ship wrecked need;
for I was that ‘ancient ill- fated
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poem by Terence George Craddock
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Arnold Rode Behind
WE galloped down the sodden track
Close buttoned 'gainst the wind;
I took the lead with whip and spur,
And Arnold rode behind.
The skies were wild; a rending gale
Ran roaring through the trees;
It sounded now like shouting hosts,
And now like angry seas.
'Spur on! Spur on!' I turned and cried,
'The fatal moments fly!'
I cursed him then-his trembling hand-
I cursed his bloodshot eye.
I cursed him for the lust of drink
That held his will a slave;
For skill to tend and mend was his
To succour and to save.
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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The Mighty Eye in a Brief Eclipse of Time
Umpteen billion years
Big Bang, supernova, gas
Brief eclipse of time
Gases swirling, fall
Sun and planets, water, life
Brief eclipse of time
Another billion
goo, amoeba, fishes swim
Brief eclipse of time
Movement, changes, flux
slither, crawl, climb, walk and talk
Brief eclipse of time
Ra, Sol, Helios,
Mithra and the Mighty Eye
Brief eclipse of time
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poem by Terry O'Leary
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Son of a Fool
Gyved and chained in his father's home,
He toiled 'neath a conqueror's rule;
Bowed to the earth in the land of his birth;
The Slave who was Son of a Fool.
Poor remnant he of a conquered race,
Long shorn of its power and pride,
No reverence shone in his sullen face
When they told how that race had died.
But the meed that he gave to his father's name
Was a down-drooped head and a flush of shame.
Burned in his brain was the pitiful tale
Of a sabre too late unsheathed;
Deep in his heart lay the poisoned dart
Of the shame that his sire bequeathed:
The searing shame of a laggard life,
Of an arm too weak in the hour of strife.
Oh, the Fool had reigned full many a year
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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