Gaye Chapman, Glitter 2

Deviance

(after Glitter: II, Gaye Chapman 2006)

In our grandmothers’ gardens
pansies or pensées
grow down to the dark earth
filigrees of lace, of decay,
frenetic love
or never-ending effort.

Memento-mori hangs
from the wrought-iron tree,
a devil’s head
always with us, his face
a pained mask, no matter
how we impose our art.


Margaret Bradstock.

Gaye Chapman
Glitter 14

Gaye Chapman
Glitter 13

Gaye Chapman
Glitter 8

Gaye Chapman
Glitter 4

Gaye Chapman
Glitter 3

Chinoiserie

(after Glitter: III, Gaye Chapman 2006)

English sparrow firmly planted
in an oriental garden, palaces
runaway lovers
fishing-boats & waterways
a willow-patterned past.

Today’s Chinese lovers
have their own apartments,
rock-bands & fast-fade jeans,
Western imperialism
in a different groove.

You can still buy the crockery
in Woolies, or any downtown
Chinese grocery store.



Margaret Bradstock.

Gaye Chapman
Glitter 1

Gaye Chapman
Decompose

Decompose

Somewhere between stasis and nullity
pre-putrescence
there is a flash
a moment of omniscience

In the cave of the dead
senses shroud
and the body wears viscera like a shawl
incandescent, swaddling the past

From melting flesh, a sightless spirit seeps
amoebic, incorporeal
ascends the stony stairway
seeking the black void beyond infinity


In response to Gaye Chapman’s ‘Decompose’.


© Sheryl Persson


The Butterfly Effect

‘Is the moon not there unless I can see it?’
- Einstein

Back home, but never back,
exploding like ectoplasm
across the empty rooms,
the decomposed gardens.

Old responsibilities, seasons
rise up, numinous
as christmas ghosts, this space
that once took us in.

For the cabbage nymph, or neophyte,
it’s chaos theory.
Dust on the snooker balls
might change

the moment of collision,
the dense stars wheeling
in the firmament,
or the response.



Margaret Bradstock.

Gaye Chapman
All this usless beauty III

Passengers


All this useless beauty
that bleeds into me
comes from you.

In this vehicle
we’re carrying a ghost
like a passenger
from one mind
to another

you come
as though there were no other
with joy in your eyes
you turn your voice low
and speak to me

this is all we can be
bright and perfect
attracting travellers
to the very core
of us.

All this useless beauty
that bleeds into me
comes from you.


-after all this useless beauty III, by Gaye Chapman

Gaye Chapman
All this useless Beauty II

Argonaut

A response to All this useless beauty II by Gaye Chapman

Only you hurt.
There is no way we can know
where you’ve been or why
but we are here now standing
around you you will not fall
we can show you the way
to strength you always knew you had.

It’s been a long time since
the wounded animal took shelter
curled tightly around itself unreachable.
Perhaps it will still die. It’s hard
standing on your own. Even harder leaning.
Try placing your feet together here
at the end of the circle look up towards
the middle take the first step
one very slow step into the spiral
each curve will comfort the echo of your tears
each chamber chart your growth
you will never be alone.

Whispers
feather light come come move on
we have had all the time in the world
we know how long it takes to form
to build rebuild ourselves over and over
until no-one would ever guess that we have
finally reached our beginning
retraced everything we knew loved trusted
the courage templates of our being
with the same touch that leads you
every inch however long it takes
around getting stronger
around forgetting everything
around remembering nothing
letting go
coming out of your shell.

Carolyne Bruyn

Gaye Chapman

All this useless Beauty I

Synesthesia

All that useless beauty
painting and poetry, their seeds
like old gods uncovered
from the rocky earth
whispering forgotten words.
You taste them on the tongue
as abandonment splatters
a sudden smudge of red.
Hearing the words
that trigger other senses
in a hybrid version
of vision and hearing
prickly pear tinged purple
takes one small step for turquoise
one giant leap for grey.
You hold to alchemy
catalyst for colouring the words
and from realms of possibility
comes all the useless beauty you can bear.


© Paula McKay

Gaye Chapman
Vanitas VI

AP 9

Vista

My eye pierces the canvass
glaucoma on the brush
I tunnel the vision of my world
slant, slash, spill
rake landscape
toss surreal stones
jigsaw the stubborn crust
refocus the earth to my colours


© Sheryl Persson

AP 8

Journey to the Centre of an Artist

To know you I make myself microbial
trepan your inscrutable skull, burrow through bone
leap canyons from cortex to cortex

From my vantage point in your cerebrum
I am blinded
gold matter glittering with intellectual bling

I escape through a labyrinth of lobes
bull-dancing
somersaulting
your mind my minotaur, panting in pursuit

I will need an armed escort for my next expedition
pulsing through arteries to the red centre of your heart
perhaps there I will make your acquaintance


Sheryl Persson
A response to AP8 & AP5 Second View by Anna Pimakhova

AP 7

The Painter Bleeds Poetry

It’s not the blood of a painter
that pumps through my veins
but the blood of a poet.

Across my canvas
words scream out
through visual description.

Metaphor making it self seen
to be heard, to be read
to be left unexplained.

The line’s the thing
flowing from my brush
from point to point.

With no final destination
can you hear my painting
as you read its structure.

Step into the union
of visual speech
into the painted word.


- after the above painting by Anna Pimkhova

AP 6

AP 5 Second View

Running through your Mind

Hear the scream of visual silence

You could strip me of everything I know
but the colours of imagination
running through my mind
can never be torn away.

This painted poetry textures memory

You could teach me every perfect detail
reveal arts most intimate secrets
but my fears would try
to kill everything off.

There’s a ghost of myself in me

Treading the grounds of my home
everyone’s out to get me
but over this painted bridge
I am safe, in silence, in texture, in spirit.


- after the above painting by Anna Pimakhova

AP 5

AP 5
(After the painting by Anna Pimakhova)

Here, under the sun’s explosion
the vast and wounded wilderness
where only raptors soar and fly
casting their shadow.

This is a wild and bloody place
even the humped canyons
yield to its fierce sorcery
where the flayed pelt of prairies burn
like Dante’s phosphorous flames.

Here’s the pulse, the heart of it:
One day you’re walking in the sun
and then you’re not.

© Paula McKay

AP 4

The Mark of the Cyclops


This is the picture that bears his mark
the non human face
lodged in the center of its body

like a monster
from a fever ridden dream
it pulses behind the bloodied surface

caged in the dark
you can’t see its one eye
or as it eats its child

Redon knew of the creature
let it roam among the hills
above the sleeping beauty

but here it’s caught
within the mask of life
painted into the netherworld.

- after the above by Anna Pimakhova

Robert Kennedy

AP 3

The White Place

That memory or dream
landscape you travel alone,
white noise breaking
the stillness, a mask
of moonlight.

Names come pattering
across the frozen screen,
villages and towns where messages
might be delivered,
packets of lives.

Beyond nuclear winter
or folds of impregnable rock
the swing of stars, like silvered bees,
circles forever
the white place in shadow.


Margaret Bradstock.

AP 2

Destination

Cut and open
there are layers of me
exposed and bleeding
wanting someone
to peel me back
and feel inside.

Beyond the wounds
the purple place
where my heart beats.

Surface highs and lows
are maps and journeys, tracks
weathered and worn
leading in the same direction.

Before me are the marks
of countless generations
stepping towards
this one destination.


- ater the above image by Anna Pimakhova

AP 1

Cocoon

Asleep in this cocoon
waiting for birth

I can feel
the pulse of life

pushing me
into existence

into being
something new.

The great corruptor
of things

will have no say
over my shape or form

because
I’ve decide to live

outside this ordinary world
where you can’t cut me

here I come
try and stop me.

by Robert Kennedy

KD8

KD11

KD14

KD13

don’t look at me

where’s my flowers
where’s my dreams
my memory

why do you stare
what’s to see?
am I a fucking picture?
in a frame
sealed off from light and life

this is so unreal
I can’t feel myself
would an itch be a beautiful thing?

don’t look at me
if I could
I’d turn my face
to the wall

I’d give everything
for just a conversation
and to feel you
feeling me

please don’t look at me

-after the above image by Kate Dorrough

Robert Kennedy


With Lautrec in Monmartre (1889)

We lounge and wait for customers
resigned or hardened to this life of love
we know as war.
The cripple sketches as we lie about
half-dressed.

Drawing us no better than we are
he takes from us such gestures
from which no-one can be saved;
drafts those parts that wives
are loath to show and men
will pay a fortune for.

The little man has found his place
we're all outsiders here.
We share his wine, the absinthe
and the pain; the theatre
of painted masks, the camouflage
of camoufleurs.

Les Elles he calls us
and we hoist our skirts
and see the passion blazing in his eyes.
His hand moving quickly on the page
he smiles, delighting in our hair
bordello bellies and each brazen face.

Paula Mckay

KD12

Artifice
(after KD 12 by Kate Durrough)
New art offers a taste of Je n’sais quoi
from eighteenth century Versailles
and we’re peasants in the presence
of some courtly copycat.

The young woman’s poised and confident.
We’re drawn instinctively towards
a black seductive spot upon her cheek
the latest thing in European chic

and her coiffure, sans pearls or flowers
conjures thoughts of what could be
concealed behind its powdered cloud;
perhaps love, Bordeaux and music
heavenly voices acknowledging the rights of man

in le pub. Remember, this is all in French
absinthe and seditious whisperings
of Gauloise cigarettes more world
than we can represent, speak of or reject.
From Fleur de Lys to Sacré bleu
a map of Paris could be useful here.


© Paula McKay

KD10

KD9

KD7

KD6

Beyond Description

In a garden of myself
I’ve become a prayer
beautiful beyond description.

Pressed as a pattern
in the sub-conscious
I’m hiding in there
amusing only myself.

But here
I’ve found others
wanting
to be laid out
like in a book.

Wanting to be un-consumed
by the earth
and not
just waiting
to turn into dust.

When the party is over
and motion is still
I rot
till I flake away
beautiful beyond description.


By Robert Kennedy

Night Air and Jasmine

(after KD 6 by Kate Durrough)

Here’s a new accidental spontaneity
refusing to comply with actual meaning.
There’s concealment of course, hidden inside
something else, giving rise to doubt
and celebration; with this kind of frivolity
you can’t have one without the other.
And expectation’s not to be ignored
it’s at least implied by the woman with the hat
and with that, I give you Venice!
masked in flowers and leaves
unfurling its vortex to confuse bees
and approaching tourists with cameras ―
who isn’t lured by such frivolity? ―
the rest like feral Quakers holding court
beneath a parasol of trees, but you can’t see these.
A man has fallen out of his gondola
with a mighty splash, you can’t see that either
but it happens time and time again.

© Paula McKay

KD4

viewed from above and not below

faberge eyeballs
the morning after crazed
with what did happenings
jack the giantkiller promises
like pumpkins about to burst over their rim

feeding on a tapestry of what might have been
devil may care dragonflies poised against chameleon leaves
their wings mistaken for a flutter of eyelids
drooping against the probablility of what didn’t

in the same way as one eye looks right
blooming with an expectation
of phone numbers and long romantic lunches
one is left petulant in the perception
that it’s all his fault
a terrible misunderstanding
and it’s been two days

in between

it’s true
he did promise cloisonne days
wired with the moment
hanging somewhere on a blended wall
admired on a whim but only
when the light is right

a civilised stand off of sorts
she here he there
the round and round of rings for her finger
make a delicate balance of imaginings
she thought he said he thought she said
it was some party


Carolyne Bruyn

KD3

High Roller

a response to KD3 by Kate Durrough


clockwise counterclockwise
I play hard with the best of them
I deal in time and how quickly it passes.
All the tricks are in my repertoire
some you’ve never heard of.

Don’t show your hand I won’t show mine.
It goes without. Concentration’s everything.
Give nothing away if you can help it.
This Blind Hookey never could see all your faces.

I’ve stacked the deck as carefully as possible
all the aces, everything is on my sleeve.
Once I wore a nearly perfect poker face.
Now the tiniest of royal flushes might
just give the lie so hurry up.

Shuffle up and deal Wizard
Liar’s Poker, Patience, Shanghai Rum
anything that takes your fancy.
I can wait but not that long.

You could win a Cadillac tonight.
Hot pink illusion. Not your average getaway.
I wonder if you’ve guessed that I’m the prize.
Would you cash your chips in for the real thing.

Go Fish and win at least enough
for us to run away together
South America, the Riviera, good old Vegas.
I would settle anywhere for Happy Families.
Drop out of sight as long as I shine in your eyes.
It’s far too early yet for Sunset Strip
Old Maid.

Carolyne Bruyn

KD2

KD1

Nine Days to Mix a Cocktail

If god made the earth in seven days then isle certainly be able to mix a cocktail in nine, even if I’m not a cat and I only have one life and let’s face it, not face off for once, you must know I don’t hold it against you that you took my cherry, which admittedly was ripe but not for the picking and picking up on that it’s a hard lesson to learn and quite a shock to realize that I’m not too sexy for my shirt or was it your shirt and you were pretty shirty so if you want to know the truth neither one of us is too sexy for this place and I’m sure that I’ll work out what this place is although it’s hard to put all the pieces together, if you’ve never seen them whole and speaking of together it’s not what I am, and not what we are and I never mixed in and I’m all mixed up and shaken not stirred like that cocktail I’m supposed to be making and all the while you’re counting down nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, for what it’s worth I still think I have time to make that cocktail but there’s just one thing that may beat me in the end, one thing, that isn’t that thing that beats me most of the time and it’s time, it’s time, it’s time to get the things I need, it’s time, three, two, one and someone’s won but it wasn’t me, it would never be me sitting under those palm trees, floating, feeling footloose, peachy, star-struck, time’s up, and free.

© Sheryl Persson