("Gravity's Rainbow", 2017, original encaustic)
The Endless River Flows
Everywhere sheep being led to slaughter
Everywhere the innocent seduced
Everywhere someone crying
While another looking up
Into open skies
As unspoken questions arise unbidden
These are the times of change and revelation
As demons are given form
To be confronted
As closets empty into streets
Overflowing
With the blessing of abundant matter
As everyone struggles to find what matters
Everyone, tempted at least,
To make manifest
Their wildest dream or
Darkest fantasy
Or secret wish of beauty
Who are you if not me
And me you
One for all and all for one
Even when we remain clueless
As those with vision
See and speak, chant and whirl
Have you ever wondered how, where, why
Mobius came up with his infinite strip
Or Escher his simultaneously
Ascending descending stairs
Giving us a path
For endless fervent pacing
Have you ever wondered why we dream
And how we can do it so well
Making worlds more vivid
Than the ones we don’t
Have you ever loved
Without reason
Without direction
Without any sense
Of accomplishing
(10/24/23)
giant worm infestation in my mind tonight
climbing up, simultaneously climbing down
engineering side rivaling artistic relief
bubbly puffy grayscale creatures
sectioned in rounded compartments
their fat butts showing, striped and round
climbing up and climbing down
In two’s and three’s they make the fabricated climb
lizard-like, but no, more rounded, more like worms with tails
drawn by Escher fine, his artistry so precise, it sails….
Rounded doorways in grayscale walls, lead to nowhere fast.
None of these creatures elongated or tall, their fate is clearly cast.
They’ll parade around in my mind tonight when I should sleep.
M.C. Escher, your mind was clearly out of sight; your legacy so deep.
Climbing up, climbing down.
I will dream of these worms around and round.
eternal divorced
her now external
but in the end
just add less
and you get
more
but
remember that
exits exist as
entrances
for doors
let you
go in
and
out
thus
the great
outdoors as
to staying indoors
both need explored to
know the ways of heaven
and
earth
If I shave with Occam’s razor
I will only grow a gross beard;
And all my scientific friends
Will think that I am truly weird.
If I want a small feline pet,
Should I adopt Schrodinger’s cat?
Will its fur be real, soft, and smooth;
Or will I only think it so?
If life, Darwin wrote, rose random,
And that is how I came to be,
If I sought to recreate me
Would I find that I had no chance?
If I find Yogi’s fork, in road,
And take it to get dirty rice
Would I find a place so busy
Nobody goes there anymore?
If I saw a Mobius strip
At a past midnight burlesque show
I’d see each curve, inside and out
‘Til my dazed mind went off the edge.
If I race up Max Escher’s stairs,
On his twisted angular trail,
In search of Babel’s pinnacle,
Will I ever reach his roof top?
If I muse, did Thinker find love
In the Venus de Milo’s arms
Before Rodin cast his great mind
Into a nude body of bronze?
#1
broken icicle
equatorial fossil
turned now into stone
Brian Johnston
June 20, 2016
Poet's Notes:
Expect more to come! Ha!
Maurits Cornelis Escher,
artist or mathematician?
Methinks he's more like a torturer,
sending faceless men on a fruitless mission!
NOTE: He's a sketcher who drew the famous work, Relativity (as well as many others).
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Escher%27s_Relativity.jpg
How fitting that today I should don
the shirt of M.C. Escher paintings
shirt of confusion
shirt of the void
shirt of the self
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