in the marrow
in the bone
the music plays
the music atones
rhythm beat
a life replete
w/ sound & sun
play my heart
play my style
strike it hot
& keep it wild
raise the voice
speak in truth
star strung songs
that talk to you
sound check
Stain Glass
Got flowers in my feelings
hearts in the mail
punishments for healing
thumbs on every scale
Weighed all my options
talked to all the folk
no additional reservation
providence bespoke
There are moments to notice
First light in the real
praying over every plate
like its my last meal
1908 Leaded Favnile glass
Tiffany Studios, Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC
Tiffany’s work heralded landscape as an appropriate alternative to figural subjects for memorial windows and conferred religious significance upon the natural world. This window, originally installed in a mausoleum in a Brooklyn cemetery, employs a familiar motif, the river of life, with a slender stream zigzagging through mountains and spilling into a placid pool in the middle ground of the composition. Masses of irises and two magnolia trees dominate the foreground and aptly illustrate the coloristic properties of Tiffany’s famed opalescent glass. Folding and manipulation of the glass while it was in its semi-molten state produced flowers that simulate the texture of real magnolia blossoms.
in bloom
she strikes her pose
on toes
perfectly placed
a bloom
of painted medicine
all in good taste
a statuesque citizen
whispers wisdom
in halls too faint
impressions from
the light of the world
she made sacrosanct
#2wordprompt #vss365 #vssdaily #poetry#strikes #placed #bloom #medicine
train hopper
take to the tracks
when the whistle blows
hop the train
first line out
destinations unknown
in the sidecar pocket
find fast friends alone
bend rounded
the mountain curves moan
drop of sleep
smashing the distant light
of a golden spike
that drives me vanishing
point to point to home
In Edward Hopper’s painting Railroad Sunset, a signal tower stands starkly against undulating green hills and the spectacular colors of sunset. Since his childhood, Hopper had been fascinated by trains, and after his marriage to Josephine Nivison Hopper, the couple embarked on their first transcontinental train trip, travelling to Colorado and New Mexico. The year that he painted this scene, Hopper and his wife travelled from New York to Charleston, South Carolina, as well as to Massachusetts and Maine. But rather than depicting the places they visited, Hopper here presents the lonely landscape in between, with the railroad tracks slicing through the countryside parallel to the picture plane—as if glimpsed from the window of a passing train. As was his frequent practice, Hopper painted the scene once he had returned to his New York studio, creating an image that is not an exact record of a specific place, but instead fuses his memories with imaginary details.
https://whitney.org/collection/works/5874
Passion Song
take that passion
and put it in a song;
paint your love’s spark
and right those wrongs.
weave your heart
into every little thread;
put those quiet nightmares
back down to bed.
the poetic pulse pursuing
all you’ve got left to give;
hallowed by thy name —
capture the life worth lived.
made resistant
I am a stone mess
a hardened stoic bone test
made resistant
over time
over the open water
I enter the city main
the bridge hands its levee
with a debt to be paid
the city paved park
takes cash to suspend
the territorial encroachment
of visitors w/o friends
life calls & doors open
across the barter lines
the end not foreseen
when purchased over time
1945—A Rural Interstate Highway Carl Rakeman
From the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) “Highways of History” project. Rakeman’s work eventually included 109 paintings with accompanying text describing and depicting a chronology of key events from 1539 (“The Coming of the Horse”) through 1945 (“Rural Interstate Highway” and “Urban Depressed Express Highway”). https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/artgallery.cfm
Passing Over
My ceremonial absence was forged in a dream It came fluttering inward, giddy and serene
I became dust with the wild darkness of the night
A golden light swoops in telepathically to speak
With one star shaped scrape it sets my mind free
Ominous presence envelopes ethereal infancy Pulling at the vapor, stiffening into a cathartic shriek
I turn myself back into the universe, incomplete