In this blog we will share with you our vision of beauty, balance, harmony.

As Mark Leach writes in his book Raw Colour with Pastels: “Sound is all around us, and it is musicians who refine that sound into something of beauty. As a painter, I have always felt that my purpose is to craft colour in a similar way, to see through the confusion and seek harmony and beauty.”

And we add: Words, fragments of sentences, spoken noise is all around us, and Ken arranges words in such a way as to capture beauty in the accidental, the ambient soundtrack of life.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

A Warm Day in Iowa

untitled ca. 19 x 17 cm - after a photograph by Susan Mitchell





A WARM DAY IN IOWA

(miles and miles of corn)
listening to the irritating squeak

of the porch swing
swing to Mingus and Miles

Davis in daylight savings time, the swishing
of sprinklers bending backwards

then forwards
skinned knees, suburban malaise

(which is just being tired of things)
and a surprising amount of similar nonsense

in a limited, coffee table edition
printed by Oxnard Press.

Can the fridge
still be plundered of midnight victuals? She laughs, then writes

“I am leane with seeing others eate.”
Then:
“This is the time of the assassins.”






Charles Mingus - Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Voyage to South of Nowhere

Hagebutte IV - Rose Hip IV 39 x 39 cm Pastel by Karin Goeppert






NOMAD ROMANCE

I’ve got you pinned to a wall.
There’s a strong smell of sage somewhere
in Spain or amid remnants of old Provence,

troubadours, broken stone, or in one of those wild corners  
of the Peloponnese, white-washed walls thick with pink light,
octopuses hanging from clothesline near the water

which is ripple of blue silk rinsed with gold.

I’ve got you pinned to a wall and you’re okay with that,
or making out in a corner of the one tavern in this village, above us
a photo of Hemingway posing with some very large very dead fish.

Maybe it’s not Hemingway, but a local hero instead, Juan or Christos
or Francois, some guy with a beard, anyway, gloating over the catch of his life.
Do we care if we offend? Probably not. Two shafts of broken light,

two shafts of crooked light, joined precariously
at the waist in old Pelop’s  
Spanish kingdom, south of nowhere, getting hotter every day.





Voyage Voyage - Desireless


Sunday, November 9, 2014

Amorphous

Amorph - Amorphous 39 x 39 cm





BOURGEOIS COMPLAINT

Obscure whispers from waves
and tree-tops confess their restless spirit;
then, as if to prove their point, depart. You contemplate
the Eight Sorrows plus their off-spring which
adds up to a total of sixteen. Numbers, though often oppressive,
enable you to grasp a nutshell’s infinite space. You’re
at home in theory, as they say; theory takes you for a ride
in a 1965 Galaxy 500 convertible, out on Fish Ranch Road
in the hills just above Berkeley, and dumps
you on your ass in the dust, near the rattle snakes
and joggers, laughing the whole time. So much for research.
If you must visit that white city perched
amid olive trees and citrus groves and hyperactive goats,
then go on, get out; we know
that your mind works differently from ours…
how does your mind work?
(Rumor has it that the rebels will seize the airport any day now;
trains have stopped running; food and clean water
are in short supply.) Rumor has it
that it doesn’t work at all, never has.






The White Stripes - In the cold cold night

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Five Minutes in Kreuzberg

Hagebutte III - Dog Rose III by Karin Goeppert






FIVE MINUTES IN KREUZBERG

The lunatic’s howling in the street again. He loses his shit
two or three times a week, right around
dusk, whose ambiguous border-line is his full moon.

If it were an optical event, some kind of structure or series
of colors, his anger might be visible from space, like the Great Wall,
like a million large female bottoms mooning the moon,
like a carnival of mayhem on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Yesterday afternoon a woman making banshee noises, demanding  
equal time. Not in trouble, troubled. Maybe she and the howling man take turns.

I’ve read that Saul Bellow, presumably on the advice
of his shrink, used to march out into the woods
for a little primal roaring after lunch. A fashion in psycho-analytic
circles of the day: dozens of writers, painters, poets out in the forests
of Connecticut or Vermont screaming their shrunken heads off.

In Europe the intelligentsia would drink a digestive after
a heavy meal and take a nap or have sex with mistress/lover/spouse. Progress, anyone?

Vacation finally peters out as I run back
into the arms of my routine, a marathoner, falling across the I’m finished line.

Imagine the Stockholm Syndrome applied to daily life. We embrace
our captors—i.e., ourselves—identify with their struggle to keep us on schedule.

You’re not as time-managed as a digitalized metronome? You must be a sociopath.

A Thracian wedding has spilled over into the street: dancing to
wild music, music Orpheus might have been torn apart to, the bride
gift-wrapped and smiling while males in double-breasted
pin-striped suits, sensitive to the sinuosities of the music,  
execute delicate steps and clap their hands. Does the prospect of good food—
e.g., sumptuous Levantine wedding banquet food—bring out the Dionysian
in people? Possibly, but who cares, because I’m

hungry for a kebab (deepest Anatolia). Or Scharwama (succulent).
Or gyros in pita bread (Greek). Mango sauce and creamy yogurt (fattening). A fistful
of onions, cumin, tart herbal sprinklings (everything). Dragon breath garlic too: do I
offend thee by breathing in thy face? Please deal with it (thank you). I must be (crazy). 






Imaginary Traveler by Omar Faruk Tekbilek