The effect of the beat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fire in its belly underneath

Flapping  its wings

The effect of the beat

Brings hurricanes and wedding rings

Changing  your view

And mending your heart

Or cleaving your dreams

And tearing your world apart

A chrysalid hangs suspended

Re-made, transformed, re-made

Love is a spiral of butterflies

Join the dance

This is a response to the painting ‘Love Force #5’ by Jonas Gerard, an artist featured on Friday Poetically at One Stop Poetry.



Responses to Art In Situ.

Here are two short poems, written in response to two different works of art.  The first was written as an immediate response to the ‘window’ part of Anish Kapoor’s Memory at the Guggenheim in New York. The second was written sat in front of Chris Ofili’s painting The Healer at Tate Britain.

I have been doing this on and off for years. I find a work that resonates and then write down my thoughts as a poem. I might tweak it a bit afterwards but essentially what is written here is faithful to what I felt at the time.

I do not read anything about the work until I have written my poem. Sometimes, of course,  it is impossible to approach something well known without already having some information or opinion about it.

Memory

Window of darkness-Lack of light

Sucked-in black velvet illusion of infinity

Vacuum of warmth

To crawl in and be forgotten and to forget for a while

In a cocoon of sensory deprivation

Of longing for simplicity

Wipe the slate clean of chalking up experience

Amniotic amnesia

The Healer

Folding up the sun, eating the star

Dark emitting light

Yellow and black

Name above the crown

Hurling gold

Spew as gold

Base material transformed

Mends the whole