Burano & Carlo Memo-Memories of an encounter 24.6.2013

the artist Carlo Memo
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This prose is the result of a very special moment spent in the house of Burano’s renowned artist Carlo Memo.
A privileged encounter into the cracks of time…

Burano & Carlo Memo
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Stepping into a rhapsody
Opening the doors to where
Pigmentation, structure & grain
Prime over mundanities.

Where comfort & authenticity poise.
We climb stairs leading to candor &
Iridescence, to a life of devotion
& skill, brushes & tubes aligned,
Immaculate, waiting for its owner
To choose its dean.

Spread layers upon layers
Of tenor & soul,
Gist & dreams,
Hope for the morrow…

Rows of monuments, wordless poems,
Music without notes, cascading on
Tight canvasses soothing our sore eyes,
Blending with the skies, soliciting the trees & seas…
We leave our calling & join thoughts around
A table of carved & sanded wood, Built

As fervidly as the
Murals, the boat…
Joined particles of
An ardent prayer…

We get up & glance to our right
At a kitchen composed as an Ode
To purity…born of a sparkling mind,
Nobility of a soul. More paintings
Hanging on walls & we slide back
Into the current of the mundane,

Bright sun & façades
Humming… beating
The drums to another tune,
Alluring us to idleness.

Tearing ourselves from the transient
Gratitude pumping our bursting veins
Aware of having been beckoned into what
Escapes most…of peeping through the keyhole
Of kudos, we withdraw cherishing a
Sketched memory of our encounter,

Depicting it into the
Chronicles of our lives
As a privileged slip
In the cracks of time.

rows of paintings…
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a table built with fervor
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bright sun & facades…
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Sunshine & postcards
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tearing ourselves from the transient
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back to departure point
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What if… the now. 4th of May 2013

the now
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What if…
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What if I would have pricked all those
Pages of words & poems, written along
Each emotion lived in the rivers of water
Shed on rocks & pebbles, polishing each
One until it sparkles in the warmth of
Spring’s first rays, kneading it to its
Fancy as the stories of my book.

What if I would have used a needle
& thread to build a chain… perhaps
Take it on a hard spin for a tumble of
Phrases, a choreography of black & white…
Pages & words flowing together gracefully
Interlacing… intoxicating them to life.
All events yarned into one, using the
Euphoric with the dramatic…
Would that have summed up the life of
Each & everyone of us?

What if we could have selected & built
A pyramid of chosen fragments & created
Our vision, molded our dreams.

What if…

Yes, what if life was not about wishes
But for us to unravel with excitement
& curiosity of the… what now?

The world of silence-March 1991-Adjusted-January 2013

the world of silence
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The world of silence
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Alone to be yourself
Through your eyes
Not another’s
Befriending
Harmony to
Whom you owe
Nothing, everything…

You pick conticent
Plenitude that
Obliges nothing…
Words unsettles
Whereas silence…
In blessedness
In its right measure

Nothing better for
Unadulterated repose.
Alone for the world tires…
Verbal duels, ambiguous
Phrases, complex minds,
Primeval instincts…
Wary, dominant,

Sometimes wild,
Sensitivity at skin level,
Applying pity in most
Unforeseen moments…
Very little for you who
Flees from all that.
Weary to the point…

Of taking refuge in
The World of silence.

Everywhere accompanying our very step (trees 3) 28.5.2013

Grazing the foot of mountains
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Everywhere accompanying our very step (trees 3)
———————————————

They are everywhere
Grazing the foot of mountains
Bordering a lake, brushing rooftops,
Designing a niche for a lone abode,
Parading on the Champs-Elysées
Or encircling protectively the Eiffel Tower
Harboring those who hurry home from a
Somber season or guarding the slanting
Façade of a historical house.

They are just everywhere
Accompanying our very step…
Around the globe, we swirl and detect
Leaves ablaze with sun’s warm reflection
Or a trunk soaked by forests flavors
After a sudden gush…
Nourishing and being nourished
By earth’s plentiful.

Rooftop’s brushes
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Nature’s protective niche
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Champs Elysées’s parade
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Framing decoratively the Eiffel Tower
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Paris under rain
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Slanting façade
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“Our” trees, the ones that have taken a place… grown on us (Trees 2)

Our ghost tree
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We sometimes have “our” trees…
That go by the name of ghost-tree
Or the-pregnant-tree, growing on
Us, following our shadows on a
Summer stroll. Some appear so
Dainty, others sturdy yet, all
Overcome long harsh winters…
We have even found one surrounded
Lovingly by baby-roots sprouting
Just everywhere, as an extension
Of their own…

…and “our” pregnant tree 🙂
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Following our shadows
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The dainty
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The sturdy
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Our family tree
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Treasured encounters –July 1985 adjusted 23.4.2013

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This poem was inspired by a very special encounter in my younger age with an older lady and a noble soul.

Treasured encounters
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Precious and valuable
Moments are not always
Seen, felt or appreciated
At the time experienced

Some people we encounter
Open up as hesitantly as
The heavy red velvet drapery
Of an age-old theatre

Revealing the folds of their
Life sparingly with the
Delicacy of a mother bird
Building a nest for her young

Twig by twig for some
Saliva and mud for others
As the patient Barn Swallow
Decorating nature’s scenery

With a lesson of brio and generosity (1)
Those are the brief twinkles
The world offers us as a glimpse
Of its limitlessness and hidden frills

How do we KNOW a moment
Be fully aware of its worth
Feel between our thumb and index
The texture of authenticity and perfection?

Practice and age chisel the tools
Of our wishful transcendence (2)
And when some open hesitantly
The curtains of their inner

Just maybe we will open it
With the thrill of a first
Birthday gift, hide it from
The envious, bring it down

From its niche with veneration
Acknowledge and appraise
The glamour of individuality
Nobility of essence

The validity of confident whispers
The strength needed to remove
The swathes of our souls
And expose the raw artistry

Of treasured encounters.
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(1) bri•o
n.
Vigor; vivacity: “She tells their story with brio and a mixture of sympathy and tart insight” (Michiko Kakutani).
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[Italian, from Spanish brio or Provençal briu, both of Celtic origin; see gwer -1 in Indo-European roots.]

(2) tran•scen•dent
adj.
1. Surpassing others; preeminent or supreme.
2. Lying beyond the ordinary range of perception: “fails to achieve a transcendent significance in suffering and squalor” (National Review).
3. Philosophy
a. Transcending the Aristotelian categories.
b. In Kant’s theory of knowledge, being beyond the limits of experience and hence unknowable.
4. Being above and independent of the material universe. Used of the Deity.

The reality of who we all are-1989 adjusted 19.4.2013

the runner
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The reality of who we all are
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Weary is the runner
Who tried it all.
Nothing that can wrench
A smile from her heart
Has she found

Look and search some more
To run away from
The confinement of her reign.
Spent to the bone
Society lifting her up to hegemony (1)

Weary is she, the runner
Who is a slave to her name
Starting off out of ardor
Never for the claim.
Loosing amity along the track

Collecting honorariums
Thrown at her as a redress
To satisfy her hunger
For fusion and empathy
What is given to the many

Oh! She does find it…
Between two laps of breath
Falling into the trap of poise
The opulence of comfort
The warmth of Kith & Kin

Only to be snatched back
To the constant drill.
Why me, does she ask
Were my choices a delusion
The erratum of my own doing (2)

Speculating she is the only
Stooge life has nominated
The quarry that has stumbled
On a boulder that was waft
On the path of earth

She vows to sleep on these
Wise discoveries with hope
Next day would bring
More reflection and ease
To the happy runner

She wants so much to embody
Still unaware of the cheers
And encouragement of peers
That have been forged by
That same mass hurled

At what became their biography
The journal of their gumption (3)
The teachings available on
The benches of what is solid
The reality of who we all are…

A runner.
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(1)
he•gem•o•ny
n. pl. he•gem•o•nies
The predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others.

(2)
er•ra•tum
n. pl. er•ra•ta
An error in printing or writing, especially such an error noted in a list of corrections and bound into a book.
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[Latin err tum, from neuter past participle of err re, to stray; see ers- in Indo-European roots.]

(3)
gump•tion
n. Informal
1. Boldness of enterprise; initiative or aggressiveness.
2. Guts; spunk.
3. Common sense.

Unabridged- 1987 adjusted January 2013

unabridged
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Unabridged
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A present
A memory
Tears, laughter
So much

So little
You say.
So strong
The fear

Of abandonment
Yours, my own
Emotions
Taking us

To a point
Of no return
Of ridicule
Contempt

So, I write.
My quill
My intermediate,
Unveils

My pride.
Makes you
Listen without
Causing a

Flurry
I have your
Warrant
To what appears

A pink cloud
Protraction of
Our affinity
Staging a few

More moments
Of grace
A pause in
The vastness

Of cosmos.
A confidant
Accomplice
Comate

All the facets
Of what we had
Obverse yet,

Unabridged.

I am all that and much more – Sunday 3rd of March 2013

this tiny,yellow,luminous dot
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I am all that and more
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I have become a tiny yellow dot in the vastness of the galaxies.
Sustaining the starry Prussian blue summer nights
A ball of fury, scorching the moving sands of the deserts
I pick up the privileged, caress them with golden dust
Feed the hungry so they do not congeal in the glaze of a frozen statue.

Your friend or foe, sweet or acrid, hunter…
Pick your cards, choose your destiny.
For I am, the face you want to see…
The choice, the thought you want to feed.
I invade or pervade every square inch of your deepest

I come and go, I am constant.
Blow and form everything into shape
Travel the paths that have been borrowed,
That have not.
I embrace what is shy and simmer what is in the making.

I tread on unfalteringly, come uninvited,
Open doors, crash through walls undeterred.
Grab you in a dance frenzy and cradle your bruised soul
Wipe the sweat off your brow and straighten your hunched mind.
I am the sun, I am the sand, the wind blowing

Tumbleweeds across deserted villages
The speck of dust glittering the surface of a rainbow
Spark in a child’s wondrous gaze
The amusement on the parched lips of the thirsty
Wisdom on the leathered skin of the aged

The notes of music in the autumn rustling leaves
I am all that and more…
I am the love that barks around the corner
Falling into the laps of the unexpected
The beauty showered in the rain of a chosen few

The growling sounds of thunder crashing through
The mountains, intimidating the slumber of nature
Shaking the heavy layers of snow, conducting them
Into an avalanche… commanding you out of inertia
Guiding your mind into the creation of what is me,

You and the plurality of existence
Bringing you back to the reasoning of hope
The meaning of purpose, the golden fabric of growth
Delight and dashingness of youth.
Have you fed the thought you want to be,

Sketched your destiny?
For you are, the tenacity of your stubbornness
The creativity of your genius, audacity in every living flake
The white fluffed duck, gliding on his reflection
Following the line of his ancestors

You are the tiny yellow, luminous dot…
All that and much much more…
For I am you,

I am life.

The deep blue- English prose and acrylic painting “Le grand bleu”-February 2013

Le grand bleu Dec.2012
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The French title of my recent painting was inspired by a film I had seen quite a while back called Le grand bleu” which, if I find on you tube will only be able to be posted if it has English subtitles. It was very popular at the time. The only thing I would have changed, is its ending which is quite tragic. It is very poetic, artistic and mostly directed to lovers of nature.
This prose is a tribute to the ocean.

The deep blue
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I see you
Crash in foam
Die on shores
Dissipate, vanish

To the deep blue
Abyss where lies
The mysteries of
Ancient history

Bury in the
Protective embrace
Of natures singularities
Whisper to its constancy

Roam through its jewels
Confer with the council
Breathe nimbus of glory
Oxygenate your inhabitation.

I look for boundaries
There are none…
Search for strain
Vanity or fame

But all I see is you
Crash on the shores
Scatter and evanesce

Embrace the deep blue.