(“Glimpsing Hokusai”, 2017, original encaustic)
Intifada aka “Kill the Jews!”
While we were sleeping content in our lives
Something dark and ugly was growing inside
Spreading across the lawns, and fibers of the net
An intifada of hate as old as time,
For those People of the Book who hold the power
Maybe we fear, maybe we envy.
“Kill the Jews” was once tolerated,
Then condemned in shame,
And now pridefully in distain proclaimed.
“Kill the Jews” may sound hip and cool
Until you realize where this led last time,
And how a Jew is no different from you.
Everyone now who’s saying it,
Gleeful as you rise up to burn again,
What it’s taken so long to build,
Consume with a hate as old as time.
But how will you feel in the morning
When the next wave comes for you…
(11/25/24)
("Glimpsing Hokusai", 2017, original encaustic)
The Risk Is All
The wages of sin is death.
And yet so many flirt with it.
People who think they can maintain the upper hand.
That they can have their cake and eat it too.
Lots have suffered though thinking they can surf the big waves.
The key word there is think.
And although surfing, like any other activity, is a learned skill, at some point it becomes something more, an extension, an expression, like a fledgling finally taking flight, and so becomes beyond thought.
And what is beyond thought is by definition enlightened.
No matter how brief the moment.
And in that moment everything and every potential is limitless and perfect.
Until the next big wave begins to swell.
(10/18/23)
Matisse pupil Albert Marquet
compared with Japanese master Hokusai
said to have poetic guile
sans unneeded detail was his style
Some aftermaths burst unseen within,
as aftershocks of sorrow,
arriving as electric jolts
that crash through your skin.
Those shockwaves subside, twinkle out
like embers;
the Kleenex runs out, then you patch up
a memory
like a pair of jeans you cannot throw away.
Then there is that other kind…
those become a stealth lingering,
a picture hung at the back of your mind,
a denial hovering over you
like a Hokusai ‘Wave’ always a verge,
a cresting,
a toppling brink
that falls so slow you don’t see it
because you are in that image somewhere.
It’s a cold tidal wave
waiting to scorch you tongue
with another winters frostbite.
That kind of aftermath is always at hand
to drown you again.
When you feel that towering brim
shout at it
just as loud as you can.
The melodic chords at finger tips , drift back and forth into a song 'ere long-the vivid images in a painter's eye transformed, splash upon canvas-
the nouns,adjectives memorable verbs from poetic ears writ large,then
sweet voices,heard thus life in all its aspects as poems explained in art.
so..
Come..fly with me beyond,beyond imagination;Capture.. emotion's aurora in your firmanent; Watch. images descend as crystallised inspiration;Bath in a tide
of surreal tranquility;Paint..what you see with fine words of poetry.
SHANTELLE
Made of stone, Shantelle - a tower.
Castille of knightly breeding, she
causes a coward to cower
or a headstone as one’s marquee.
Marble robes of nobility -
curves like pert Kanagawa wave.
Shantelle’s immortal legacy,
her character - Mount Fuji brave.
Jutting cliff of Collinsport, Maine -
widow’s stone jaw, the mortal sees,
as the tide twirls her skirt, she reigns
over their blasphemous pleas.
Château Lafleur in stone goblet.
“À votre santé,” to your health.
Loves her people with no regret.
Shantelle bows down - restores their wealth.
2/24/2020
Shantelle Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Julia Ward
*The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai - art
**Château Lafleur - a fine wine
***À votre santé - to your health
The artist Hokusai memorialized,
In his woodblock print of raging seas,
The great wave off Kanagawa,
That brought Nippon to its knees.
Again the modern rising sun is caught,
In the wrath of shifting plates,
And the belch of a feral tsunami,
Which left millions unsure of their fates
Waves swallowed the archepelico.
Mount Fuji stood at the ready to defend.
The islands won the battle with nature,
But Japans ill's will take years to mend.
Grace and will fills the souls of surviviors
Ancestors fortitude flows through their veins.
They will try to accept lifes yin and yang,
While resolving the tragedy that remains.
The flying cranes wings are strong.
Broad and feathered to deal with lifes tests.
Through centuries they have learned many lessons,
On how to rebuild and strengthen their nests.
Life
in all
its aspects-
poems explained in
art.
Ekphrasis After Hokusai
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