Selected poems
A painter's lament
They say the art of painting is dead
Not so say I
Just temporarily mislaid
Bright pixels dazzling, blinding the eyes and astonishing the senses
Vacant
But a distant memory lurks and the Elders still have something
to say
In the shadowy past
I recall Vermeer's assistant grinding the crude pigments made of minerals crushed by mortar and pestle
Bought from the Apothecary
A shopping list of madders, vermilion and weld
If you listen carefully, the sound of each colour can be heard,
The scrunch of each mineral discerned
Each cadence, a trace of its former life
A finer distinction
Relieved of its cumbersome form
it becomes lighter and mixes with white spirit like a cocktail blast of violets, mauves and ochres
Ground to a fine powder and wet with new life
When you look at a painting something of the creator's spirit is mixed with the paint
Traces everywhere if you can feel hard enough
There is a need for painters still in this rushed existence
Something shaped by hand,
Immediate, awake
the artists' touch, the artists mark
The deft short brushstrokes that convey the stiff feathers of an upright bird
Or a brocade of dying colours on an old worn sofa,
An accent of red that heightens the blow
KAPOW Roy Lichtenstein
The languorous swipe of the brush across the canvas as the artist departs the studio.
Thiebaud's iced cakes moistened with creamy white frosting made of a thick impasto spread with a buttery knife across its form
With random swirls and strokes of alternating candy pinks and middle greens
Vivifying the finer vital senses
Their vibration
Kandinsky's music stretches
the succulent paint oozing from its tube, reeking of linseed and turps dribbling towards an unpainted canvas
The luscious stripes of candy oranges and lemons coiled around a stick next to an imitation 18th century blue Chinese vase
A still life of colourful toys
Lent to the imagination on an oily cloth of
spattered blue specks and dots of white and yellow juxtaposed against the
haemorrhaging reds and crimsons bleeding with life dripping like a Pollock onto the darkened wood floor
A bloody mess
This artist's studio
I stand in the middle and all around me
the heady vapours of mineral turps
are Intoxicating
Bluebeard Incorporated
I hear Bluebeard's cutting up souls these days
An impressive graduate
A PhD in Butchery
severing and classifying
body parts invisible to the eye
He's even got the little guys onto it
They've got that same deadly glint in their eyes
waiting
Going in for the kill
They'll be the Master Builders of the next generation
Castles in the air
of the highest definition of course
Dazzling to the eye
A blinding of consciousness
their bodies relegated to service vehicles
Bluebeard's contemporaries
Conferencing round the table,
Dissecting, planning, loaves of crusty bread and pulp
Repulsive and
Gorging on un-fattened lambs
starved of their Muse
padlocked Double
in rooms of grim and dimming lights
In these times I forget to pray to Jesus
The ultimate Sacrificial Lamb
Served on a platter
And the poets' words get mislaid while the bluebeards
masticate each sinew
laid bare and bloodied
A tremendous violence
A quota of souls marked
The poet's heart hidden
A treasure, nonetheless
A whisper
But ... I have the key
Little Salem
The lofty ones' own
A selfies each
Corroborates their hearsay
In their own image
God's image,
The Sin of Inflation tempts their inadequacies grown with
Egos ready to pop in greedy excitement
to be Proved Right
How that pale blue balloon grows Dangerously large and drifts Upwards
Into the celestial skies
Nearer God
Careful Icarus
The selfies' narrative, an Artefact of the times
their phones out on Arthur's round table
But we don't believe it
This slab is pointy and barbed
Pass the phone around, Chinese whispers
There's a leak and I hear from the Suit the same made up story by the son and the Sage,
Another version
It's all the same
Join the dots and the picture is clear,
Little Salem
Elders In cahoots
Preening their shiny hides and greasing the wheels of their own inferiority
Convinced Hirst's skull is made entirely of fake Diamonds
Of sugary platitudes of care and sycophancy
Concealing the big dark hole of ruin underneath
The kind of Death that has always existed
Side by side
Since the world began
a record exists of their assemblies
minutes taken of those Accused
further investigation of the lies created by Judges out of work
A platform of Injustice
The Antagonist required for powerful theatre
No audition required
This man is Chosen for his Voice
Dissonant to their drained ears
an Intolerance Immune to the Higher man's words
But below
The murky sea is not entirely hidden from view
A Big Mistake,
For the pedestrian observes with daylight vision and that is enough to see into the waters clearly
Why is it that the Higher Man is not recognised by these counterfeit kings and queens?
Self-appointed and sitting in their velvety thrones
their scepters beautifully polished and filed to a point
Courtly games performed among titty, gleeful applause
Pass the stick,
And poke it in the fire
'More fire' Giles Cory would have said to these Base Creatures
They cannot see the Pearl for the swine
And instead condemn the Highest of men
Their eyes covered with scales glued down Hard
with Ill Intent and
Consenting
artificial light props up their disguise
But within the Higher Man
the sun warms his heart from within and without and
Accompanies him on his way
Clotilde Lopez is a practicing artist, playwright and poet and has recently begun writing poetry in Spanish. She is deeply connected to Jungian Psychology and Carmelite Spirituality.