Sins of Sainthood

in a poem you say we are not saints
but fucking artists; it raises questions:
are all saints programmatic to those so
cookie-cutter religions?     what of we
whose religion is art, each work raised up
a prayer to creativity itself,
our faith in the shared soul whose expression
is art in all its queer diversity,
its wondrous, luscious digressions and stern
insistence on a mercuric norm blown
by seasonal whims and the evolution
of intelligences   —   intuitive,
physical,  intellectual,  all   —   art
calls us to be saints of a different virtue.

David M Pitchford
19 Dec 2011

Vicarious

I keep grasping at the words, these visions;
today they have taken me to                egypt
inside chicago’s art institute,      off
to  moscow  to discover some new to me
painter,   anna vinogradova,   who paints
what my canvas tells me I will never
and yet my heart commands paint paint paint, push
the brush, the trowel, the knife, dig in your
fingers and spread the colors!        words take me
there and beyond, into oddly beautiful
people first and secondhand   —   because words
are magic portals through which we travel
from sign to, not the thing itself, but the
experience of the thing, vicarious.

David M Pitchford
3 Dec 2011

Distances

Hero's Final Vigil

 

The distance between you-and-me is less
than the ens and ems between these letters,
yet in the minds’ eye, Planck’s scale grows too vast
a chasm; illusion clouds thought, thought clouds
heart and head alike. We part never to
touch again—Hero losing Leander,
whose delusion of drowning blinds him to
her lamp evermore. The drowned cannot swim
nor circumnavigate the Hellespont . . .

I am no Leander, she no Hero,
and yet we play the drama, live their myth
as though that were real to this world. Love dies
a million deaths in such tragedies—Oh!
But love births itself a billion times in Life! 

©David M Pitchford
10 April 2009

Rokeby Venus: Ekphrastic Sonnet

 

 

"Rokeby Venus" by Diego Velasquez c. 1650

What Within the Looking Glass?

Is it truth you see within your looking
glass? Or merely that shallow reflection,
that skin-deep self, flesh manifestation
engineered of cells divided, cooking
DNA’s unique recipe—working
toward our next, our better(?), evolution,
and victim to fortune’s machination
toward Nature’s mysterious re-making?
 

Venus, do you see your truth? Burning flame
lit by unseen sun, burning bright within
eyes shadowed by doubt, self-immolation
to protest yesterday’s beauty—that same
beauty as marks you today, looks akin
to Ideal, yet perceived sans admiration?

David M Pitchford
6 December 2008

Agony: sonnet on a Ligozzi painting

"Agony" by Jacopo Ligozzi

 

Gardens of Our Own Agony

“The Kingdom is within you.” And Satan
shakes his little fist within my bruised black
soul: sinner! sinner! His guilt an attack
only I inflict upon myself. Can
God hate himself for being All? Satan
sits back in his shadowed corner to crack
gallows grins of gleeful pride—yes, he’ll stack
the evidence neck-deep—cannot withstand

shadow, for he is Morning. What wise men
know, is that the shadow fears the light less
than light fears that which covers it. But, see,
we are offspring of the Divine; our sin
is separation—dwelling in darks’ garden
when we are made and dwell in ecstasy.

 

David M Pitchford
18 November 2008

Colorizing Durer

Anyone else a fan of Albrecht Durer? I saved some copies of his b/w sketches (woodcuts?) years ago from wga, and then later colored them in as an exercise in learning Photoshop. I especially like this one – the detail is unbelieveable! I’ll have to search my files and post my colorized “St. Michael” later.

Don’t you just love that little lizard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Petrarchan Sonnet on a Bouguereau

For Kith & Kin

Patriot lost, mourned by no country, but

a wife and infant attend in tearful

elegy—all grief is personal—Full

as these heroes’ lives, too young they die, glut

Death with his impatient hosts. Who knows what

change each war can bring? Our headlines are full

of patriotic verve . . . Who’s this to fool?

A soldier dies for kith & kin. One may strut

to war with flag and chin held high, duty

filling heart and mind, but when the killing

begins, Life’s instinct shrugs nobility

aside so the panicked heart can beat. Thrilling

to war is the place of mad men—zealotry

a tyrant more evil than any despot king.

David M Pitchford

Picture: “Elegy” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1899
Comments invited.

Lamia’s Tale

Courtesan’s Confession

You brought me here a slave, though I was

a noblewoman in my own land, a fairer land

crowned with mountains and without that stench,

constant reek of fish and brine. Whore for a king—

but far too wise, thus sold as courtesan, no common

whore, but whore nonetheless. And you wonder

at my audacity to despise both king and man? Fools

have no use for a woman of intelligence, a learnéd

whore who can carry conversation as well as water

and the faint heart of a political pedant.

Your physician with his golden needle

pierced the soft mechanism of my fertile

womb, and made me a eunuch whore . . . What then

did you think I would do? Robbed of my self,

robbed of immortality, I cried out

to my goddess, supplicating for life

and vengeance. She heard, oh yes, and cried loud

and long within me even as my own

tears stained the satin settee you thought might

please me. I was never pleased! Your wine-stench

and olive-slick skin repulsed me always!

I learned of your wife, mother of your child,

and listened at Symposium for fear

in your strange tales; naming myself Lamia,

I took the serpent’s way into your wife’s

rooms with poisons of my own. She suffered

little for your transgression—I took mercy

on other victims—but your infant son

shed his flesh for the dish I serve you this

night to celebrate your final birthday!

David M Pitchford
9 June 2008

Picture: “The Lamia” by Herbert James Draper, 1909

This is sort of a mishmash of Greek mythology. It is based on the tales of Lamia, and mixed with similar tales of vengeance and such. Apparently, there were multiple archetypes of prostitutes in ancient Greece—one for pleasure only (pornae) both freelance and pimped, and one for pleasure and companionship (hetaera) more comparable to courtesans and often educated. Hope you enjoy the poem.