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, August 19, 2018

RESPECT




Harbinger 100 x 120 x 1.5 cm acrylic on canvas



TUSCAN ORDEAL

Netherlandish neo-pagans come here for
the Madagascar Hoopoe, a striped bird
with an umber head that looks like a helmet, and  
a long thin beak. It doesn’t sing or moan or whistle—
it shrieks as if someone has pissed it off.

The first time I heard one I thought some
Netflix spawned man-eating
creature had crawled up
to the side yard of our rented house:

rows of vines, olive trees flickering from white to pale dusty  
plush green. Then back.  Productive landscape, food factory.

Peasants must think we are nuts to come here
and watch them work. I try to picture leathery
farm hands with big white teeth pulling up in a tour bus
in front of a manufacturing facility, a chip-building campus
clutching meal tickets and smart phones. That’s us, in reverse.

Warm grass blades pricking my bare feet.  Late afternoon
and I’m in pajamas, sipping, I kid you not, a G&T.  Across the street
are three farm workers taking a break beneath a massive cherry tree,

observing a dork in his jammies at five PM. They’re intimidatingly
detached about it all. To add insult, two Madagascar Hoopoes
shriek from a shared tree limb. A blond woman in very short shorts
jogs by.  Doing what workers everywhere would do
each man gives his crotch a subconscious squeeze,
sending signals from his literal lap top. I have another sip.

In five days I’ll be teaching the gerund.
The present perfect progressive.
In five months I’ll know for sure I can’t go on.
This is known as the grammar of small despair. 



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