acrophobia (on a painting by Pat Orban)

acrophobia

rain bites skin

chills bones

among warm speckled rays

thunder hems & haws    clears its throat of sky

lilac whiffs with languid wind    and that smell

when rain first tames the dust brings me

to who I am (in this cage of dying skin)

the old man rambled    can’t work in the lightening

I had to agree    it was a yellow afternoon

and there is no place better to stand

than where your feet meet the ground

I wouldn’t go up there either

not if I had a say

not now        probably never

I Shot the Serif (on a painting by Pat Orban)

I Shot the Serif

these bricks

I labor to layer

like sturdy scars

imprison me

as certainly as

the runaway train

roaring through my brain

jumps the track of reason

sharp barb lurks in the dark

the point is silence

I move between the taste

of rust and blood

hook slides from jaw

with the simplicity of gravity

I swish free smoothly slipping

beneath the quivered surface

burnt dusk oozes from the eye of night

cloistered with pain and wormy delusion

the dangling trap drifts beyond

I forage shimmering in the infinite dawn

Girl Braiding Hair

Girl Braiding Hair

She combs her hair as if to untangle
the tussle of his touch, powders plum skin
still stinging from his grizzled tentacle,
over is over when the pain begins.

Elderberry lips are smeared red to hide
the ache, and the baby that was to be,
a hated thing, no longer lives inside,
over is over, at last she writhes free.

Emerging from tide pools, how her eyes swell,
gleam blue, brim briny with bright tears of no;
her anguish, a warped lens, a fractured shell,
over is over wherever she goes.

Easy enough to layer a right hand
full of hair limp on the wild red rope held
snug by left, hand upon hand upon hand,
over is over, when love's flame is quelled.

Not so simple now to grab another fist
full of life, or to be braided again,
when what blooms and wrenches within is missed,
over is over when twisted hurt ends.

    

I chose to write on “Girl Braiding Hair” because I have always been haunted by the sensuality of Renoir’s work. According to Tama Garb, the renowned art historian, Renoir was known as "above all, the painter of women." The women he painted were often pictured as simultaneously innocent, provocative, pensive, alluring, enticing and unattainable. Perhaps it was these qualities of feminine allure and beauty that inspired Robin Dodge to create “Girl Braiding Hair” after the fashion of a Renoir woman. It is also such qualities in women that inspired poet, W. B. Yeats, to some of his greatest work. Although I admire and have always been inspired by the fine craftsmanship of his poetry, I have never attempted, until now, to write in the style of W. B. Yeats. It was, therefore, a wonderful challenge to have this opportunity to seriously emulate this poet I have always believed to be one of the greatest of all time.

The Phantom Gallery

This poem needs to be viewed as a pdf.  Please click here.

"The Phantom Gallery" is a "2D" (or 2 directional poem) was written in repsonse to the 90 Minute Art Show at the Yellow Pines Reading Series in Boulder on September 15, 2010.

It was composed to be read both vertically (down each column) and horizontally (across each row). It is difficult to get a full appreciation for the work by looking at it on a page. Please click to listen to the audio version.  (The vertical voice is M. D. Friedman and the horizonal voice is Mariamne Engle Friedman.)

Hushed

- in response to Bea Bulter's watercolor painting, Untitled




the sputtering cyclone of


the golden ghost of hope


curls like the smoking promise


around a glowing womb


rubs the nerve raw


opens to the dawning


shadowed forge of life


a lens of black flame


focuses the whirling circle of pain


into a screaming vortex of mirror shard


the lightening claw


of dreamed desire


hushed in misted silence


 

The Weaving of Two

- in response to the fiber art pieces of Jill Powers, A Blaze with Light & Red Essence






a blaze of red fiber


a broom scraping sky


skirted with leaf and pale scale


the top chopped teepee


its sap swells sweetly into bone


binds together feather and spore


shapes a basket crowned with stubble


the sunset scorches


the bird stitched night


drills my seed into white hot steel


 

On Works by Helen Brader

Ancient Words

nothing to say
nothing more to see
the throbbing emptiness
of molding words
the chapel of a broken soul
darkness squeaking with light




Opening

begging to begin again
sucked through the graying door
the smoldering storm of it
pierces the muscled grain of stick
deep within its core
reaching into ragged root
dank with musky lust
the twisted branch
seared to its bright quick
draws me through my shadow
sews me into the skin of earth
a heart embroidered with peace

Red Motion

- in response to Mark Jorden's photograph of the same name




blurred into vivid line


the stainless pipe


caves in on itself


falls into the tired vase


sheds its casing like a cracked cricket

Red Alert

- in response to Wendy Rochman's political word art sculpture Alert




alert


Bush's mind


is missing a few pieces


the thorny stem


is missing its rose


blood gurgles out thick as oil


in the name of


Republican fraud