dispersing...

the passing of winter into spring

and a vaporous life rises on a wild bird's song

disperses wide over the affirming sea

that private sea calm to the heart belong...

la casa deshabitada... (after E.Diego)

"porque llega un hora en que todas las casas se despueblan de sus ruidos mortales..."*

(there were cut bunches in buckets and stacked in boxes

everywhere, and they came very early in the

mornings to gather for their shops,

for their homes)

the abandoned building sits on the edge of chinatown, slowly corroding in the rain...

***

"y las vidrieras son frias como esos invernaderos desolados..."**

(even on the coldest day, the tight blooms and bundled greens

suffused the air with their dying scents,

their fading colours so composed

for a little longer)

a warehouse filled with flowers traded in kindnesses by the 3 chinese brothers...

***

"y es como si no hubiese venido nadie, como si nadie mirase los recintos del hombre,

bajo los astros."***

(that was many years ago and most will not remember this

as a place for the joy seeking, for the death

honouring and for the every day

of the living)

and where the brothers now, where grow the lilies, where stars still shimmer on...

*selected lines in spanish from "Bajo los Astros", a poem by ELISEO DIEGO, 1920-1994 

(translation by Kathleen Weaver, 1982)

*"because an hour comes when every house will empty of its mortal noises..."

**"and window panes are cold like those bleak greenhouses..."

***"and it is just as if no one had ever come, as if no one had seen the haunts of man, under the stars."

the pale hour... (after L-P Fargue)

"l'heure passe que les mains de la nuit faufilent aux vieux murs..."

(when they are very old, you forget how long they have lived...

you feel that you should know them better, 

even if you have known them a long time)

as the pale hour steals by, leave shadows quiver in the fading light...

***

"on entend le bruit nombreux des feuilles partout comme un feu qui prend..."

(when they leave us, you realize you don't miss them so much...

even as you know they are gone forever,

but the grieving and the regrets remain)

a certain pervasive scent lingers on, infusing the amorphous life...

***

"un rayon rôde encore à la crête du mur, glisse d'une main calme  et nous conduit vers l'ombre..."

(and everyday is a little less - a little less of them, a little less of you...

you will not know them any more now

than when you had known them then)

the branches nod in silence, a black tangle upon the darkening sky...

*selected lines in french from "Au Fil de l'Heure Pâle" by LEON-PAUL FARGUE (1876-1947)

eyes water, nose bright

a certain subversive law of body averages is determined by randomly equal levels of intensive porus scrutiny and in puris naturalibus fleshhh apathy

the lack of self-form awarenessses

greedy eyes focus on virtual entities

only and only
for hours days years generations

eventual loss of lower body strength 

devolution subtracts toes shortens limbs simplifies genitalia
hair optional for twiddling in momentary ennuiii
soon enough so soon

eyes leak water

noses bleed white

internal visions of skimming round and round a pond of icedwater in the forbidden city

while flakes of snowcrystals pile upon this compounded nirvana for corroding anatomical vessels

from a winter past...

carrying forward connotations of a winter past 

since the verdancy is lost to the whiteout of rogue snowfalls,

we purify, whitewash, spread the lye in outward calibrations 

towards the ficklefixated exponential reveal...

a most presentient congress of pre-raphaelite hues

gather in sodden joy on sidewalks and in garden dirt

why not a kale tree, 
why not sapient moss

winter solstice

seasonal solace

annual stimulus

anno mmxvii 

you are most welcome

ruinminations...

here, too, stand mysterious ruins by water's edge,

from what brute architects to what hollow kings

 foment hardcore monuments in mild forest glens,

with cold altar upon altar heaving heavenwards

where are they now, the lumbering ruminators

to unearth such moss encrusted stratagems fore

[and regain long lost powers of primeval strain

only to lose them again in the immutable march]

in the beat of a heart...

in the beat of a heart...
we concede to the compromised evaluation of the other...
                                                                         
nailed to a tree

in the beat of a heart...

we lose the generalized compression of a charred life...

sprayed on a wall

in the beat of a heart...
we drop the controlled savagery of a fading smile...

staining the sidewalk

in the beat of a heart...
we evade a concentric descend into unrelenting love...

mere words on the page*



*the hand-scripted heart (text from "The Book of Knowledge, Little Reference Series Part I") is by Kim Kennedy Austin, exhibited in "Industry Charity Faith Hope", her solo show at the West Vancouver Museum, January 14 - March 7, 2015

j'ai rêvé la nuit verte aux neiges éblouies...*

 the ascension of viridescent clouds towards mars

obligates the secular twilight of the northern skies

 with scant deposits of crystalline dust upon black earth
are small gatherings in quick time before night falls

and closes up tight behind a serpentine continuum

without the veiled urgency of an unstoppable flow...

"Les Fleuves m'ont laissé descendre où je voulais

Dans les clapotements furieux des marées..."*

["The rivers let me drift down where I would

Down through the furious splashing of the tides..."]

* selected lines from "Le Bateau ivre" by Arthur Rimbaud [1854-1891]

j'ai rêvé du ciel rougeoyant...

 the year is ending in flashes of infrared red

floated into the ambiguity of a porous reveal

 in the darkness sprouting rare amanita crowns

to ignite the delirium pulled into a frozen net

 of silver threads wrapped in concrete foil

spark growth the evercrimson tree of lucidity

free-soaring into the cardinal space of night

with no full safety floor to turn back to...

floating states

 on a night like this

when you bring me

the full aurora realm

from ether streaming

 softly, softly the glass

dissolves to dry floatage

above the jetting sky

all the birds unleashed

but on these other nights

we will hang heavy within

the cool flocculus steam

of unintended savior states

sun muun

 the door may be closed

defensive syntax on guard

above cold foreign soil

invested chinese swamp

 or blank as a renouncement

barring prejudicial flames

the colour lines were drawn

and yet they are re-crossed

 a single character marks

a half number retreated

to consolations unknown

behind the multilocked door

 perhaps they soon shall pass

more inscrutable as always

but never going very far

from portals so hard won

for all the ancient societies

of the persistent secret orders

will leak a welcome of sorts

to those who can open doors

the fenestration of an empty building

when all the glass has been smashed in, the invitations go out -
edifying hosts, no bar -
the front door may be missing, but climb through the windows anyway
the lights will not come on, so
feel your way along the soggy floors, the walls still standing 
through the south facing windows, the rising moon beams into large empty rooms
negative spaces between absent furniture
when maximum capacity is reached, cast your phobic angst from the glassless openings
the cold night air is neither rational nor engaging
wait for water/drink, water/rain, water/blast
if none is forthcoming, turn inward again, away from the window arrangement to the damp warmth of a hundred bodies

avoiding all wet corners

will the morning light bring a forced surrender, flapping from a penetrating edict of sorts
interlocation is designed to draw out all those who withstood and still standing
soon they will surround the tense will compounded and block the joyless gape of a sentenced building
the political abstract to be waylaid by a loud compendium of passion
but such wholesome infestation is always assailable

beware the dangling buckets
 

princess house

it is snowing leaves of gold the wind shaking them loose as they flutter down in front of the pale pink house full of slow shadows and faded doubts
the mesh-veil framed around the porch held up by dark pink columns muffles the light and mutes inconsequential secrets pulled back into the dark hallway
a hand quivers behind the drapes blinded by the inaction of certain grey days running damp and dirty down princess avenue of the unroyal house and home
continues up the warped stairs to sit in dusky rooms and lie a while on the saddled bed of mechanical emotions rolling over onto the final broken sacrament

a mud-slinging screamfest

a clay orifice upon flesh -

fill the dark hollow with a howl...

sonic containment within,

psychical release without -
mouth to mouth resurrect.

If you feel the need to unleash the mother of all screams without disturbing the peaceful setting of West Vancouver, go and pick up one of these clay pots at the West Vancouver Museum and expand your lungs for a major howl into it. Your muffled bellow will barely ruffle the feathers of any sedate West Van matrons around!

These "scream pots" are the objets d'artifice of an exhibition conceived by the not so vociferous Babak Golkar whose magic persian carpet mushroomed a miniature city of intricate buildings at the Charles H. Scott Gallery last year. The terracotta pots are hand-crafted into varied shapes and sizes to affect the tenor of the screams emitted into them. Even if one does not feel the need to cry out, the tactile nature of the clay invites one to touch, hold, caress...

*****

The second part of the exhibit includes a digital projection of blobs of clay being hurled at a wall with the accompanying plopping sound effects - the aptly scatological visual [and audio] is somewhat mesmerizing to watch and presents another release of sorts in the physical force of flinging mud...
[Gabriel Orozco also once pitched clay balls in one of his projects, but at the pots themselves as they were being turned on the wheel...[Cazuelas (Beginnings), 2002]

The "turds" dried and fell off with the resultant staining still manifest on the wall, creating a monochrome messy dot "painting" a la the Japanese eccentric Yayoi Kusama - with the baked pieces scattered on the floor below their previous elevated surface like so many dropped and inedible crumbs...

in the end, a lumpen being of baked clay

lies dejected, hardened, unused -

and failing to rise again,

sinks to the floorboards of life...

Dialectic of Failure
New Work by Babak Golkar
October 11 to December 7, 2013
West Vancouver Museum 

the bipolarity of blue bears...

strange strandings from arctic empires

moulding ice blue stance behind the stables

the late august sun beats inconsolate upon
the prowling pair, still durable and fierce
for another maladaptive winterwelter

ex oriente lux

across from the patricia hotel a ghostly sign glows luminous thoughts in strict chinese strokes,
the windows dark the building blank as the eastern words jack across a slow to 30 kph zone...
the drifters and the seekers spread out their accumulations in exchange for another day,
another day of rounding the block only to find themselves back in the same fabrications,
where the fabulists drown in their own spit and the somnambulists soothe the nay-slayers...

"The simple damning lust, 

float flat magic in low changing 

evenings. Shiver your hands 

in dance. Empty all of me for 

knowing, and will the danger 

of identification,

Let me sit and go blind in my dreaming 

and be that dream in purpose and device."*

[*excerpt from "The New World" by Imamu Amiri BARAKA, 1969]

at the end of thought...

 the thoughtless throne

out worn and thrown out

there to assemble as one

in open weather and empty lot

unhurried as a stone...

"that there lies at the end of thought

a foyer of the spirit in a landscape

of the mind, in which we sit

 and wear humanity's bleak crown..."*

[the second stanza from "Crude Foyer" by Wallace STEVENS in Transport to Summer, 1947]

death in the lane

 the soil was freshly turned

the seedlings ready for planting

she glances up from her digging

and sees the blue car in the lane

oddly parked against the brambles

no one is in the driver's seat

but a dog pops up from behind

waiting for its owner

she bends to spot her tomatoes in 

one long calibrated row

at noon, she goes into the house

but loud sirens lure her back out

firemen run by carrying wood blocks

while paramedics stand helplessly 

around the blue car

she sees the dog is still in the car

barking behind the closed windows

the body lying on the ground

under a white blanket

in the dusty lane behind her house

on a most unwary summer's day

before the long weekend

"The adult consciousness of the ego,

of our present identity,

of our feelings of joy and solitude,

of what can be done and what we'll finally do

or of the world situation

is like the sudden fright that cars

produce when they plough through a field,

like the dirty deed of taking advantage

of people who show signs of weakness,

like when we feel naked, lacking in faith,

and out of contact with others..."*

[* excerpt from "Four Lane Road, 1956" by Ernest FARRE in Edward Hopper: Poems, 2006 -  translated from the Catalan by Lawrence Venuti]

For the late A.C. - a neighbour whom I have only seen walking her dogs.