Poetry from art

Original poetry written from and inspired by the following works of art, provided and curated by Effie Pasagiannis at her Art + Poetry Salon I performed at, September 2017! Thank you to Effie and all the artists for this truly affecting experience…

#1
Saryn Chorney

when i see her
all time stops
a new memory
now sweet and
wild
beckoning
she tells me
stand alone
in the darkness
of the woods
smudge the blood
on your fingers
across the sky
why do you waste your time
waiting for signs?

receive me, child
for i am yourself
the antler you lost
cannot be retrieved by
someone else
in the night it is
always i who am
looking back
remember when
you left to
heal the mysteries
you kept
was it not i
who came to
meet you
in the mists
before sunrise
no ceremony except
the sanctity
of being
alive?

and when you
press your
forehead to
mine i know
you can
imagine it
the blood of
both our lives
resolved in
sun-fire
imprinted on my
closed eyes
round like the
skin of my
medicine
drum
the reverberation
annunciates
back

her skin
my skin
calls to me
through this
ancient
music-

spirit hands enjoined in
our
time

and suddenly
we are standing there
holy and
rooted
swift and
yet
suspended
in presence

renewed inside the
realm
of our
resonance.

**

and what do i see in you?
my mighty
goddess
of revelation
earthen toned
and strong as the
trunk of a tree
you are my invitation
to meet you
to slow to
stop my breath my
ravenous heart from
barreling past
this moment-
just you
just me.
there come these
slices of time when we
all must remember
to be gentle.
to loosen our grip
on the mortal clock to
stand with the sun
as our halo to
let the swiftness
in our blood
suspend to- sweet
presence.
there come these
moments when i
realize
everything in the
natural world is
announcing itself
without needing to
force it or even to try.
i heard everything
that morning when
she met me, when i
woke myself and walked
through the mists before
sunrise
that dream i will
never forget a
fraction of a moment
stopped on the hill
in the silence
i saw her, like my
own spirit reflected
back to me in
eternal space.
she appears
to me now, in
this painting
i can see the ache
in her striations but i
also see her fortitude
my fortitude.
i hear her
without words
telling me
don’t write
this poem so quickly
don’t rush as you do
to the end don’t
stare at the hands
of the clock
as they move
just breathe
and trust
your way back.

#2
Linzi Silverman

a book told me today
illness itself
is the cure
but i no longer trust
my body
i am blue-lipped
and frozen
in anger.
i will let these
creatures wander
let these flowers
take over
i am not
myself- this
page from
god’s handbook
abandoned
in the garden.
somatic destiny
peels its name
from psyche and
we are walking through
the marsh carrying
explanations as
the bones of our
former selves
tantalizing, much
to give up this
rhetoric for myth
for archetype for
poetic symbol that
wriggles meaning
like a lizard, forsaking
what’s still.

i am a creature
of habit
purple flowers
snaking up my
backbone
many have tried
to study
even i have
not come
close
this
creature self that
masks my
mortal self
(for animals in
their way know
nothing but
the moment)
peering out
at you from books
peculiar in its
wildness
my body is one
of such
cause for alarm

the
reptiles begin to
march from beneath
my skin
these wants i
left them rampant
residues of
past lives
spawning
spores
from the
edges of pages
that once
understood

to be so
silent
in the growing
i stop myself
from recognition
a prehistoric
strangeness, a
gap in
evolution
sometimes i just
cannot
bring myself
to move
i am all
rosy cheeked
burrowed next to
daydreams in
the ground
surrendered
like a
blue black
blossom
between
the words in
a book

maybe that’s
why i am
more reptilian
than girl
maybe that’s
why i am
more flower
than human

flicking through
these pages
attempting to verify
causes
the myths inside
my body
these things that continue
to grow
long after you
will them
to die

#3
Linzi Silverman

and
without warning
they
return.
open palmed
like gaping mouths
fingers stretched

starved
from some other life
bringing the
hunger

i remember your
hands
i remember my
own hands
frantic in the water
always
trying to find an
island
trying to remember
there is an
island
thrashing
hands
cut and pasted
jaggedly taped
in some
terrible psychic
collage of
residual wants and
ecstatic fears
rushing up
from the
primordial
water
all color
sapped away
so i cannot
discern
whose hands
are mine
whose hands
are grasping
from a place
of fear and not
a place
of true power
hands my
father’s hands
reaching out
from the darkness
of my memory
pulling away
whenever i
got close, my
hands repeating
the motion it is
how we learn
history it is
how we learn
future
it is
painful.
a book
told me once
if the
hands of
the ego
must be
sundered
then
let them go
so that we
will not be tempted
to grasp the
things that do not
serve us, these
same destructive
things that
we reach for
in fear.
i do not want
any of these
pairs of
hands.
these hands
from the past
these future
hands writing a
story i can no longer
recognize.
i will use
my heart and
my eyes instead
nimble in my
limbics
peel these hands
from my landscape
give up my own
grasping
sundered
fill it
with blood.
fill it
with water
fill it
with hope.
i must reach, now
inward
gentle to the
touch
not grasping
to hold
psychic wounds
closed not
thrashing frantic
to find another
island,
drowning
just
removing the
film
over my
vision
delicate
like a veil
to a world
i have never
lived in
constantly
prostrating myself
to some
wicked
need.
will my
new pair be
smelted in
alchemical
gold
earthen with
the soul
of an animal
branches of
trees or instead
just wings?
i look down
at my
hands
the ones that
reached for
the father
the ones that
reached for
the lovers the
ones that scaled
mountains the
ones that
gave comfort i
know my hands are
for this
above all
setting fire to
this useless
map and
rubbing the
ashes on my
throat and
forehead and
having
something other than
faith that they
will build a
world i can
believe in
hands, i think
that’s called
progress, no
i think that’s
called dedicated
living, the
power of
devotion with
one outstretched
finger
pointing to
my heart.
blessed.
remember
all things can
only carry the
power we
give to them so
use your hands
wisely
use your heart
wisely
let it be my
offerings
i carry
not the
transgressions
of my
past
discernment
i will
plant hearty
bulbs to
cultivate you
trusting the
earth and
this work
that lays
roots

grasping
self
take comfort
in the fact that
you don’t always
have to
grasp
i will use my
hands to
hold you
teach you
about yourself
come, we will
touch these
flowers when they
bloom
know they
grew from us and
not some
terrible
psychic amalgam we
once
burned and
returned
to the sea.

#4
Linzi Silverman

who can you be,
girl?
and why do we
insist on
blindness
some tragedy like
swords on a tarot
card confining us
to our
fate
i have distrusted
you
for reasons i
cannot forsake but
my eyes were
taken in this quake
that fractured our
mother souls, our
resonance with
each other.
we stand before
ourselves
tying the
blindfolds,
shattering to
possess these
mortal loves
that can never quite
fill
us up-
can you see
yourself
in me?
our willingness to
be vicious
strips us
i could not
remember
standing as
sisters
the black blood
already dried
on my palms.
so now
what?
how does it serve us
when we compete,
too suspicious
to receive
the edges
in me that
pierce same
edges in you?
let us teach our
friends our
daughters
hands are not for
tying blindfolds
but for
feeling our way
through darkness
such
that
only tender fingers
could re-ignite our
understanding.

#5
Dino Vallis

strange girl i see
the pain
in your eyes
hard to look at
i feel i have
circled this
mirror a
thousand times
somehow not
noticing
the threads.
what archaic sense
of history keeps us
bound to
chimeric creatures-
poisonous, their
brightly colored
illumination
stringing these
vines
she can hear
their
tiny mouths
in motion
feathers rustling and
claws clicking,
the whispers-
you must
stay with us
in the past
where everything
is beautiful.

yes,
how beautiful
she looks-
pained
primeval affront of
dragons and
birds
how many times
have i faced these
same anguished eyes
and not seen
the threads?

to every man his chimera,
i never stopped
remembering
baudelaire
who was so perceptive
to notice
the strands
tying men to their
illusions.

but what of
this girl and all
the warriors like her
blistering in silent
who can no
longer discern
the difference between this
wicked
embroidery and
once pure
skin?

who is the one
we wait for
to gently unwind
red thread from
forehead, mouth, mind?
same girl who meets
this one
in the mirror
and vows
to save her.