Thursday, March 25, 2010

Viciously virtuous cycles

I.
White bleeds gooed and gummy
out from these gouges
pecked in a splintered flesh
of sickly pine. There,
peaking between drooped boughs,
paired ghostly Ivory
bills pinch translucent
buttons off larval treats.

II.
White swings snowy beats.
Powdered breasts lift loopy
to merge with virgin vapors
raised opalescent
from pools of lye. Enjoined
where they'll saturate,
cloud-bank canvases
drip freckled gouache gifts.

III.
White splashes milky sheets,
foam-washing chiseled
shoulders. A sooted saint,
who clasps at bunched limestone
for-get-me-nots, fixes
her iris-less gaze
on cheap china bowls
laced with spider-web cracks.

IV.
White swirls through ashy gaps
in twin graphite prints
left from digits stopping
by while they sop bread.
Blanching, square gum is gripped
to erase fudges spilled
outside a Census box
blandly labeled White.

8 comments:

The Scrybe said...

Tremendous wordplay again! And III. is definitely my favourite piece of an inspired whole.

human being said...

talk about imagery!
and yes... wordplay as Scrybe mentioned...

you lure us with the title to enter a very intricate maze... with whitewashed walls... white floor and white ceiling... and when we finally find the way out, we come to know that white has got lots of shades...

a difficult but worthy journey through your 'vicious' maze...
:)

one of my favorite styles is when a theme is rendered from different perspectives...


for-get-me-nots was a killer!

really enjoyed this work, Francis...

Jenny said...

Quite a remarkable poem. So much to discover in on many levels.

Some (of several) favorites:

"her iris-less gaze
on cheap china bowls
laced with spider-web cracks"

"White swirls through ashy gaps
in twin graphite prints"

Impressive!

Anders Enochsson said...

This was dazzling, so much inside it. Odd perhaps, it reminds me of last time I was in Gotland (a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea). I stayed in the town Visby which had a peculiar and rich quality; the accent, the eerie stone formations at the harbor and the town’s feeling of the sea. It felt like this drapery, just like your poem.

Anonymous said...

This was richer than most. A poem to read in a refuge somewhere, perhaps where the samovar gently prepares Russian tea which is served with lemon and bread.

Francis Scudellari said...

@Scrybe Thanks... I'm partial to III. too.

@hb I'm very glad you enjoyed it, and didn't get lost in the maze :).

@Jenny Thank you. This one was a bit of a struggle for me. It went through a few iterations and a couple changes in style.

@Ande Visby sounds like a very interesting place. It's a part of the world I'd like to visit (among so many others).

@PO That would have been an ideal place to write it as well :).

Claudette Cohen said...

Wow! Such a blitz of white creates so much texture, like looking at a mixed-medium that is several layers deep. Gorgeous use of language.

Francis Scudellari said...

Thanks so much Claude.