Best Ekphrastic Poems
soft voices splintered by thunderous laughter
float
in the cool September night air.
serving savoury tastes
of garlic, thyme and wine
le garcon de cafe shivers, eager to be cocooned
like a butterfly in radiating warmth from the cafe’s heart
under a paled lemon awning,
statuesque lanterns extend towering candlelit arms
to paint the terrace and its patrons below amber,
while illuminating dancing shadows on scarred tables
imperfect light from windows of darkened houses
splash the nearby cobblestone street
creating an illusion of blue black and
aubergine paves
under starry lit inky skies
evening amblers footsteps echo in quiet conversation
unaware the solitary pine tree in the Place
became a shadow.
What pain you must have felt - what a life that you lived
A starving artist - swallows his own paint - in order to feel complete.
Painting the simple folk of a town
The tavern at dusk became your sacred domain.
The room at the asylum made you feel so diminutive.
You were an artist with a silent vow to God.
All of your stress that led to premature aging.
Your paints were your friends
and your paintings were your lovers.
Selling only two in your lifetime - never living to see how famous you’d become
You were humble and modest to a t and few people could see
The genius behind the madness- the madness was deafening
The sensitive and silent strokes of an Impressionist
Calmly reaching for the oranges and the blues
The flames reach higher and the skies
Your paintings - now viewed by millions -
you’re cherished at last
You make your mark on the world - with a night sky painted from memory
Years after you passed away I read
Your letters to your brother - Dear Theo
what a terrific bond you shared
I know now why you are called a painter.
Thing about artists - we die young and only then are we discovered
while sitting at a local literary Louvre
with artists and some other radicals
waiting for return of grammatical groove
that had left me on today's sabbatical
I stumbled for some heartfelt words
to share with you of artistic notions
of whether art is abstract or more absurd
can it cure our ills with colourful potions
and quietly the souls walked the walls
of painted lands and many female forms
to search their own inspiration's calls
outside their box of artistic norms
macroed with micro muted brush lines
of sultry legs and strong countenance
whatever treasure is sought we will find
with some ingrained artful provenance
like Samuel Morse as student of masters
copied Da Vinci from the Parisian museum
hued new light on Mona Lisa to recast her
and express his own artistic freedom
we give out hope of showing of ourselves
that bit of soul our heart holds close
down new pathways that we delve
our hands stretch toward divine, almost
© Goode Guy 2011-09-17
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekphrasis
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5918
Withered fingers
Cannot play anymore;
I drown in nuanced shades of blue,
Not seeing, in my plight,
My strings, wound tight,
Suspending me
Like a puppet,
Tethered to life.
I in my tattered clothes,
Blue like sorrow,
Torn like the heart that hopes,
Unable to keep out the cold
Or cover the secrets I hold—
I am the man who mopes,
Holding my guitar close
As it whispers its chords
Whilst I, cross-legged, ponder
Life in rags and cardboards.
Back to the old routine:
Awash in blue,
This song’s for you:
Echoes of a gunshot;
The click of a trigger.
She wore an aura of light
and bent over a sewing machine.
Through thick lenses she peered
at every stitch created by her touch.
She didn’t say for whom
she was making the dress
while letting fine fabric
slip through her hands.
Her actions called it love.
When she’d give the dress
all she asked
was to see the light
in a child’s eyes
as she reflected
on life.
She’d hold the child
on her lap, and release
the child to laugh and play
in a park, so beautiful
and free as the bird
that flew through the sky.
(Based on a painting by Lily Pregianiero)
The air is thick with dust and whispers,
shadows stretch like long-forgotten hands.
In the art room, the canvases wait—
some bold, some broken, all unwilling to be silent.
A sunset canvas shouts first,
its colours bleeding, desperate—
“I was fire once! I burned the sky!
Now I am nothing but fading light.”
A storm looms beside it, violent, raw,
its waves clawing at the frame.
"I rage, I roar, yet I am trapped!"
"Who will sail my waters? Who will drown in my night?"
An old woman watches from another painting,
her eyes hollow, lips pursed in secret.
"They painted my smile, but not my sorrow."
"Look deeper—do you see me now?"
And then, in the corner—unfinished, trembling—
a blank canvas breathes in the silence.
Half-formed figures whisper in the mist of paint.
“I am not yet. I am becoming.”
The room shudders, the colours pulse,
stories scream from their frames,
aching to be seen, desperate to be heard—
but will you listen?