Pictures from a Lifelong Friendship

1. The external

In this painting, one of us (could be

either) sits with the man of her house,

‘making music together.’  The other

(again, either) waits in her own place, 

her cat curled peacefully by, ready 

to share, later, sisterly truths and secrets.

2. The inner

This other painting of us, friend, 

shows us happily travelling, as Harlequin 

and Gypsy. We are dancing as we go. 

The practical bits and pieces are debris;

we are looking up at a sphere of light

we’ve conjured. It’s filled with art.

1. Song of Gomorrah (Carrington)

2. Gypsy and Harlequin (Varo)

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Seventeen. 

Using paintings by lifelong friends Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo as inspiration to write about a lifelong friendship of my own (with a fellow-poet who is also a painter). I originally included a lot of factual stuff which also fitted, but then decided to let the images, as described, do all the work.

NaPo directed us to artworks at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, but I had trouble making those links work on this post, so have sent you elsewhere to see the paintings.

Recent Acquisitions

 

I go slowly through the Museum

of Photographic Art. The exhibits

come forward or recede, according 

to my attention, seeming to demand 

a backdrop of music. They’re art, aren’t they, 

even if not made with paint. There swells

then, loud in my secret hearing,

Don McLean singing Vincent. 

A red feather bursts from a swirl of blue.

‘A colourful life’ says a collective label.

Transparency is vivid, shaping an eye

startlingly bright. Vincent’s coruscating stars 

erupt in the night sky, as the song rises, 

forms in space and falls, splashing 

all the walls, filling the high corners. 

‘Hocus pocus,’ the sign says. ‘Picture this.’

 

Voice and words turn sad. I arrive 

at Nagasaki and documents of conflict:

the photograph as witness. Facing the past,

the artist speaks. I look at all the  portraits 

of dead people, whose eyes gaze back, alive. 

And at the graves, the bodies, the ruined 

landscapes. It’s all storyteller work. (Think: 

‘Vincent didn’t know the half of it.’)

‘Perhaps they’ll listen now,’

Don finishes the song. But I don’t know.

People are still cruel. (I myself

kill certain insects.) But in spite

of horror, in spite of melancholy,

it’s good to take a pause, focus, capture 

the unnoticed: feathers, the whirling of stars. 

The sign says, ‘Pay what you wish.’

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Sixteen. We are invited to superimpose a piece of music on a place; also we might take inspiration from exhibits (online) in the Museum of  Photographic Art in San Diego. Additionally, I've chosen to make mine partly a found poem, by incorporating the following words and phrases found in various labels there (not necessarily where I've assigned them in the poem):

recent acquisitions 

red feather

a colourful life

transparency

forms in space 

hocus hocus 

picture this

documents of conflict

the photograph as witness

facing the past

the artist speaks

storyteller work

take a pause
focus 

capture the unnoticed 

pay what you wish

Turkish Delight

I’ve loved you since childhood:

for your smooth skin, just a little 

slippery; your flavour, fruity but 

delicate; your fine white coat

of dusted sugar; your scent I

inhale and savour …  More!

NaPoWriMo, Day Fifteen

Around Home, Sounds of the Known

 

This patch of land which is my place –

my unit, my yard, my bit of street,

and, if you like, my slice of sky …

the view, too, over the road

to those blue mountains looming

above the houses opposite: a string, 

a ridge, an endless, undulant panel 

(where, if you try, you can discern a dragon

along the top edge) – is loud with sound.

Outside, the sounds are all around,

and varied. There's a hurried run of feet

along the bitumen street, pounding

with a firm beat. There’s the low growl 

of a car passing, or slowing for home.

On warm afternoons, the little kids

across the way come out to play

on their bikes in the driveway, supervised

by the watchful eyes of mum and dad.

Sometimes their big sister is with them.

Her calm, light voice intercedes between 

the little ones’ bright squeals and yells.

As night arrives, they trundle their bikes inside

with reluctant rumble. The street goes quiet

behind doors, while the lights come on

and the dark settles, widens. Now the sound

of footsteps moves, tapping, across floors 

of lino or wood or shuffles, muffled by rugs.

My cat stretches, scratches her carpeted post:

a long rasp of claws from each front paw.

Then she pads across the floor for her food,

which she chews with a soft scrunch. Me, 

I clatter utensils on the bench, making sure

she’s well fed. Otherwise she might treat me

to a long, strident miaow, loud enough to tell 

the whole street I don’t feed her well! (But then 

she purrs, while we snuggle in front of the telly.)

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Fourteen, in which we are asked to write of the sounds of a particular place, excluding references to birdsong, and using a conversational tone and slant rhymes. (My slant rhymes don't necessarily happen at the ends of lines. I also use a few full rhymes.) 

I got quite carried away and forgot all about the stipulation 'to imagine the “music” of a place without people in it'! 

Picturing Brazil

 

Return I will, to old Brazil. The song lingered

in my mind long past the young years when I heard it.

Now, being promised online images of art

from Brazil, my mind raced on ahead. I heard it

           again, that song; heard it wailing, in old longing

           for a land unknown: my fanciful own longing.

But the pictures that I found were made by a man

visiting from Holland. A few he created 

there in Brazil; others he remembered later,

transposing them onto a Dutch landscape – created,

           it seems, to hide wildness (though there too is the sea,

           which completes any country’s beauty: the untamed sea).

Brazil, in my imagination, is varied.

In contrast, I picture just flatness in Holland.

I have never travelled to either in my life.

(I once married a Dutchman, but not in Holland.)

           I wanted the paintings to show me a Brazil

  full of colour and spice, my old dream of Brazil.

NaPoWriMo Day Thirteen

(Using an unnamed verse form, evidently invented by Donald Justice.)

Anonymous Recovery

 (Wooden statue whittled by a mental patient)

1.

You think I am vain, 

like the lovely boy

gazing in the pool

at his own reflection.

He lost his head,

didn’t he? – his pretty head –

obsession becoming

a kind of self-rejection.

But when I fixed

on my own image,

it was to recreate it 

for introspection.

I wanted to see

what my soul looked like,

not to show you but myself …

and found it all dejection.

2.

Skinny bugger, 

isn’t he?

I made him out of 

apple wood,

dragging it from where 

it fell.

I carved and smoothed

and shaped

rudimentary knees, face, 

tiny genitals.

(I know he doesn’t

seem well.)

3.

He’s not looking

up or out.

His arms cling

to his sides.

Maybe he doesn’t 

know any better?

What is the 

satisfaction of being?

It’s apparent

he doesn’t know.

His life is not freedom

but a fetter.

4.

Now that I’ve made him,

there are those who suppose

he is me.

It might be so – yet, is he not

something alien? 

You tell me!

Now that I have cut him 

off from myself, I see

what is me.

I’m lighter than smoke

dancing on air, no more weight

stuck to me.

NaPoWriMo Day Twelve.

Based on this item in the American Visionary Art Museum. (The link takes you to the image and also the story behind it.)