#5

inspired by:

The New English Bible

The Theatre of Tennessee Williams

Andersons Fairy Tales

One day it rained very hard,  

the burden of it was far to heavy for us to bear.

I am a follower of a new way, I sold

my beautiful diamonds with the harvest moon shining-

Yes, I noticed it.

Something still worse was coming:

She was getting delusions of grandeur,

playing with great bright colored butterflys;

The sky with all its stars was above them.

Time was when you were dead in your sins and wickedness,

the play is done!

When the time came he took his place at the table,

    but where was it to be found?

He has no sense of humor.

Well, that boy is repulsive and

I didn’t get any better.

He was in the room where plaster casts of the deformed limbs 

hang on the walls.

Try to be like him,

for all of us are parts of one body.

Come now let us be human!

Every tongue confess -” I know that when I am gone, savage wolves will come among you and will not spare the flock.”

After that speech was finished the old snails crept into their houses.

The tower room of the house on his birthday

gave a banquet.

There were also great forest glades.

Are the dancing girls asleep, or are they dead?

They were fairies.





A poetry exercise: take 3 or 4 preferable non-fiction books and page through randomly, writing down the first phrase that catches your eye. Stagger your search between your 3 or 4 books – first this one, then that, then that, then go through again. Write your phrases in a casual, irregular way in your notebook until you feel you have enough. Then choose with instinct which phrase goes where – this, that, this, that.

You will then have a poem.

The Artist becomes a Human

(Something must be surrendered)

It is difficult to explain the position of the artist’s right hand,

    the mannered spread of the slender fingers of her left hand

marks a place in an open book.

The female figure in the sculpture also has a certain sphinx like 

    quality, the split ego of the solitary narcisstic individual.

Facing each other in a deliberately archaic manner,

   the three reluctant heroes evaluate the situation.

Their gaze is focused in an expression of playful, yet slightly anxious   

    anticipation, in the search for an explanation of her terrible fate:

The bloom of youth

The Road Back, The Ordinary World-

   his comparison of the fall of hair with running water.

Will he choose in accordance with his old, flawed ways?

The year 1886, the first of these climactic phases,

     dominated the entire familty with her ‘often cruel influence’

(which she must have found increasingly upsetting).

.

While the Face, marked by Age

     returns swiftly to the throne room, laying the broom before the ferocious floating Head.

The human half of a female centaur is seen struggling to break free of her lower, animal self,

while

        she is commiting murder and suicide in effigy.

(Something must be given back)

The much smaller torso of Venus appears to nestle up to the Head,

   emerging from the cloud of marble.

The victim of a misfortune, 

    or of an understandable error of judgment.

Sympathetic,

   reflecting the choice of the new person she has become.

Strengh is needed for the return to the upper world.

INSPIRED BY:

Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel

The Writer’s Journey

The Art of the Portrait